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It felt like a moment lifted 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 venue is ideal,” I remarked to the future groom. He leaned in as if revealing a confidential detail: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

My expression was courteous as he outlined how generative AI helped in the wedding preparations. (A real wedding planner was eventually brought in.) I responded courteously. Inside, though, I resolved: if my future spouse approached to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The Latest Relationship Non-Negotiable.

Some people have typical relationship dealbreakers. Doesn’t smoke, is a cat person, wants kids. Over the past few months, as warnings of an impending AI-induced apocalypse have flooded my social media and party conversations, I’ve come up with a new one. I will not date someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool truly, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the object of my disdain.)

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

When a Minor Turn-Off Turns Into a Ethical Issue.

The term “getting the ick” refers to that sensation of being unexpectedly disgusted. Part 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 simple ick, a kneejerk feeling of revulsion that had no any solid reasoning.

But here we are, in autumn 2025, and using the tool even for benign tasks such as figuring out a fitness routine or deciding what to wear feels an increasingly political choice. We know that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is marketed as a substitute for real relationships; isolated, disconnected people finding 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 think in terms of profit first and people second.

Sure, ChatGPT can generate your shopping list. But does that personal benefit excuse the wider damage it creates?

A Dating Disaster: If Your Date Uses ChatGPT.

As if it had not done enough already, ChatGPT has in some way made dating even worse. A good friend recently told me that she went out with a man, and in the morning proposed they get breakfast together. He pulled out his phone, accessed ChatGPT, and asked 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 unmotivated they’ll consult ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot imagine forming a profound, lasting connection with someone who frequently interacts with a technology that’s kneecapping our shared attention spans and possibly signaling total apocalypse. Intellectual curiosity, creativity, originality – I probably won’t find what I prize in someone who thinks “productivity” means asking an app to recap a movie plot so they don’t have to waste their time, you know, watching it.

Consider whether your dating preference actually aligns with your life 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 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 strike against ChatGPT chumps was too harsh. She said no, go forth and judge, though it might limit my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now uses 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 essential to find someone whose beliefs are aligned with yours.”

More Individuals Voicing ChatGPT Concerns.

The aversion for AI applies beyond the romantic realm. 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 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 laziness”.

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

A recent friend’s breakup was particularly ugly. She sided with one of them after learning the other went to ChatGPT, a infamously awful therapy alternative, not their partner, when they needed to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they refused to sit through any uncomfortable human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to deal with something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Suddenly I couldn’t do it by myself. I was too reliant on AI to do the simplest things [at work].

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, shares comparable views. “I am not sure if I would think differently 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.”

Public Figures and Tech Insiders Speaking Out.

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

Even, to an degree, the people who power the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users turn off AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely remove, similar slop on Instagram. Reports 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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