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

My smile was courteous as he outlined how AI tools helped in the wedding planning. (A human wedding planner was also brought in.) I responded courteously. Internally, though, I decided: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding input from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Contemporary Dating Dealbreakers: AI Usage.

Some people have common relationship non-negotiables. Doesn’t smoke, prefers cat person, wants kids. During the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced doomsday have dominated my social media and party conversations, I’ve come up with a fresh one. I will not date someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program truly, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the target of my scorn.)

People always ask the “what if” scenarios. What if I use it for my job, but I dislike it otherwise? Imagine if I use it to help people? What if I only use it as a editing 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.

When a Simple Turn-Off Becomes a Ethical Stand.

“Getting the ick” is what we occasionally call being turned off. Part of having an ick is not fully understanding why you considered someone’s behavior so unseemly. For example, I once felt the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. At first, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a mere ick, a kneejerk feeling of disgust 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 moral act. We are aware that the power-hungry tech drains our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is sold as a substitute for human connection; lonely, detached people finding companionship or even falling in love with code is not as much a science fiction plot point as it is just the way things go now. The megarich 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 outweigh the broader harm it can cause?

How AI Spoils Romance and Intimacy.

It seems ChatGPT has managed to make the romantic scene even more difficult. A good friend recently told me that she spent a night with a man, and in the morning proposed they get breakfast together. He took out his phone, opened ChatGPT, and asked for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who delegates decisions, including the fun ones like picking where to eat? If someone is so lazy they’ll consult ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

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

Consider whether your dating criterion actually fits with your long-term objectives.

Ali Jackson, a dating and relationship coach located in New York, employs ChatGPT for certain tasks – but she is not an evangelist. In the past six months or so, she says “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, go forth and evaluate, though it might limit my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now uses the tech.

“Ask yourself if your preference is truly serving your long-term goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would assume that’s one of your values, and it’s important to find someone whose beliefs are aligned with yours.”

Others Who Have the AI Ick.

Other people experience 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 going into her phone settings and disabling AI features on all her apps, though tech platforms from Google to Spotify make it almost impossible to opt out. Pereira thinks that using ChatGPT “demonstrates such a laziness”.

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

Two of Pereira’s friends lately had a messy breakup. She supported one of them after learning the other went to ChatGPT, a infamously awful therapy substitute, not their partner, when they wanted to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they refused to sit through any difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Eventually, I could not manage it on my own. I had grown too reliant on AI for even routine work.

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

Well-Known Figures and Silicon Valley Professionals Voicing Concerns.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “rather die” than use generative AI, it made news. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories rant against the tech cautioning 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 various industries. I believe these quotes go viral for a cause: people sympathize with them.

Even, to an extent, the people who power the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely deactivate, comparable slop on Instagram. Sources indicated that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley professionals refuse to use AI to write their code.

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