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The scene could have been taken from a Nancy Meyers film. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that smelled of discreet wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is ideal,” I told the future groom. He leaned in as if sharing a confidential detail: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

I grinned politely as this person explained using generative AI for the early stages of planning the wedding. (They also employed a professional wedding planner.) I responded politely. Inside, though, I decided: if my future spouse came to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Contemporary Romantic Dealbreakers: Artificial Intelligence Usage.

Many individuals have standard romantic non-negotiables. Won’t smoke, is a cat person, desires kids. During the past few months, as alarms of an approaching AI-induced apocalypse have dominated my news feed and social conversations, I’ve developed a fresh one. I will not date someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool really, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the target of my disdain.)

I’ve encountered all the “what if’s”. Suppose I use it for my job, but I dislike it otherwise? What if I use it to help people? How about I only use it as a proofreading tool – I’d never use it to “write” anything. To all that I say: there are people out there for you. But I am not one of them.

From ‘Ick’ to Ethical Stance.

The phrase “getting the ick” describes that sensation of being unexpectedly turned off. Part of having an ick is not fully understanding why you found someone’s behavior so off-putting. For example, I once felt the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. At first, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a mere ick, a kneejerk feeling of revulsion that lacked any clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for seemingly simple tasks like creating a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a deliberate political act. We know that the power-hungry tech drains our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is sold as a placebo for human connection; lonely, disconnected people finding companionship or even falling in love with code is not as much a sci-fi scenario as it is just the way things go now. The ultra-wealthy tech executives in control of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

Sure, ChatGPT can create your shopping list. But does that individual benefit excuse the collective negative impact it causes?

A Dating Disaster: If Your Partner Uses ChatGPT.

It appears ChatGPT has managed to make the romantic scene even more challenging. A good friend lately told me that she spent a night with a man, and in the morning suggested they get breakfast together. He took out his phone, opened ChatGPT, and requested for restaurant suggestions. Why build a relationship with someone who outsources decisions, including the fun ones like picking where to eat? If someone is so unmotivated they’ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s hard to see myself building a significant relationship with a person who often uses a tool that erodes concentration and might bring about societal collapse. Inquisitiveness, originality, uniqueness – I likely won’t find what I prize in someone who believes “productivity” means asking an app to summarize a movie plot so they don’t have to spend their time, you know, watching it.

Consider whether your dating criterion genuinely aligns with your life objectives.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she does use ChatGPT for specific purposes but is not endorse it. In the past six months or so, she states “every one” of her clients has approached her expressing concern about “chatfishing” or people who use AI to create everything on their dating apps – all the way down to the DMs they send. I inquired Jackson if my rule against ChatGPT users was too harsh. She said no, go forth and evaluate, though it might limit my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now utilizes the tech.

“Ask yourself if your choice is truly supporting your future goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would presume that’s one of your principles, and it’s important to find someone whose values are in sync with yours.”

Additional People Expressing AI Apprehensions.

Other people get the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and does sound for multiple live music venues across the city. She dreams about accessing her phone settings and deactivating AI features on all her apps, though tech platforms from Google to Spotify make it almost impossible to disable. Pereira thinks that using ChatGPT “shows such a laziness”.

“It’s like you are unable to think for yourself, and you have to depend on an app for that,” she said.

Two of Pereira’s friends lately had a complicated breakup. She sided with one of them after learning the other turned to ChatGPT, a notoriously poor therapy alternative, not their partner, when they wanted to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they refused to endure any difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to deal with something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Suddenly I was unable to do it by myself. I was too reliant on AI to do the most basic things [at work].

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and is a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is similarly skeptical. “I don’t know if I would think otherwise about someone who uses ChatGPT, but I would be like, ‘come on,’” he said. “You don’t need to depend on it to make a grocery list. Your life is likely not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Celebrity and Tech Backlash.

Guillermo del Toro’s statement that he’d “rather die” over using generative AI received significant coverage. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories rant against the tech warning about “environmental racism” and showing fear over users who are “codependent on a machine”. The same goes for when Simu Liu, Alison Roman, Céline Dion, Emily Blunt, and others issued statements that are skeptical of AI in their respective industries. I think these quotes spread widely for a cause: people agree with them.

Even, to an degree, the people who run the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely deactivate, similar slop on Instagram. Reports suggested that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley techies won’t use AI to write their code.

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