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It felt like a scene lifted from a Nancy Meyers movie. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that reeked of stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is ideal,” I told the future groom. He leaned in as if revealing a confidential detail: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

I grinned politely as this man explained using generative AI for the early stages of organizing the wedding. (They also employed a human wedding planner.) I replied politely. Internally, though, I decided: if my prospective spouse approached to me with wedding input from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The New Relationship Dealbreaker.

Some people have typical relationship dealbreakers. Doesn’t smoke, prefers cat person, wants kids. Over the past few months, as alarms of an approaching AI-induced doomsday have dominated my news feed and party conversations, I’ve developed a fresh one. I refuse to date someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool really, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the target of my disdain.)

I’ve encountered all the “what if’s”. What if I use it for my job, but I hate 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 individuals out there for you. But I am not one of them.

From ‘Ick’ to Political Stance.

The term “getting the ick” describes that sensation of being suddenly disgusted. A key aspect of having an ick is not fully understanding why you found someone’s behavior so off-putting. For example, I once got 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 disgust that had no any clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even using ChatGPT for apparently innocent tasks like designing a workout plan or selecting an outfit feels like a conscious political act. We are aware that the energy-intensive tech drains our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is marketed as a substitute for human connection; isolated, detached people discovering companionship or even developing feelings 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 prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

OK, so ChatGPT assists you write your grocery list. Does your individual convenience justify the societal harm it can cause?

A Dating Problem: If Your Date Relies on ChatGPT.

As if it had not done enough already, ChatGPT has in some way made dating even worse. A close acquaintance recently told me that she went out with a man, and in the morning suggested they get breakfast together. He pulled out his phone, accessed ChatGPT, and requested for restaurant suggestions. Why build a relationship with someone who delegates decisions, including the fun ones like picking where to eat? If someone is so lazy they’ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot imagine forming a profound, long-term connection with someone who regularly engages with a technology that’s weakening our shared attention spans and possibly signaling total apocalypse. Inquisitiveness, originality, uniqueness – I probably won’t find what I value in someone who believes “productivity” means prompting an app to recap a movie plot so they don’t have to waste their time, you know, watching it.

Ask yourself if your [dating] choice is truly serving your long-term goals.

Ali Jackson, a dating and relationship coach based in New York, employs ChatGPT for certain tasks – but she is not an advocate. In the past six months or so, she states “every one” of her clients has approached her complaining about “chatfishing” or people who use AI to generate everything on their dating apps – all the way down to the DMs they send. I inquired Jackson if my rule against ChatGPT chumps was too harsh. She said no, proceed 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 serving your long-term goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would presume that’s one of your principles, and it’s important to find someone whose beliefs are aligned with yours.”

Additional Individuals Expressing ChatGPT Concerns.

The dislike for AI extends beyond the dating sphere. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and works in sound for multiple live music venues across the city. She dreams about accessing her phone settings and disabling AI features on all her apps, though tech platforms from Google to Spotify make it nearly impossible to disable. Pereira thinks that using ChatGPT “demonstrates such a lack of initiative”.

“It’s like you can’t think for yourself, and you have to depend on an app for that,” she said.

A recent friend’s breakup was especially messy. She supported one of them after discovering the other turned to ChatGPT, a notoriously poor therapy alternative, not their partner, when they needed to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they didn’t want to endure any difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Suddenly I couldn’t do it by myself. I was too dependent 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 likewise skeptical. “I am not sure if I would think differently about someone who uses ChatGPT, but I would be like, ‘come on,’” he said. “You shouldn’t have to rely on it to make a grocery list. Your life is probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Celebrity and Industry Backlash.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “prefer death” than use AI tools, it made headlines. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories rant against the tech cautioning about “environmental racism” and expressing fear over users who are “codependent on a machine”. The same goes for when Simu Liu, Alison Roman, Céline Dion, Emily Blunt, and others make statements that are skeptical of AI in their respective industries. I think these quotes spread widely for a reason: people agree with them.

This sentiment is present even among those in the tech sector. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely remove, similar slop on Instagram. Sources indicated that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley professionals won’t use AI to write their code.

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