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The scene could have been pulled from a Nancy Meyers production. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that smelled of stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is perfect,” I told the groom-to-be. He leaned in as if revealing a secret: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

My expression was polite as he outlined how generative AI helped in the wedding preparations. (A human wedding planner was also hired.) I replied politely. Internally, however, I decided: if my prospective spouse approached to me with wedding input courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Modern Romantic Dealbreakers: AI Usage.

Many individuals have standard relationship non-negotiables. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, wants kids. During the past few months, as alarms of an approaching AI-induced doomsday have dominated my social media and social conversations, I’ve developed a new one. I refuse to date someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool really, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the object of my scorn.)

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

How a Minor Turn-Off Turns Into a Moral Stand.

The term “getting the ick” describes that feeling of being suddenly turned off. Part of having an ick is not fully understanding why you found someone’s behavior so off-putting. For instance, I once felt the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a simple ick, a kneejerk feeling of disgust that lacked any clear reasoning.

But here we are, in fall 2025, and using the tool even for benign tasks such as figuring out a fitness routine or deciding what to wear feels an more and more political choice. We know that the energy-intensive tech depletes our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is sold as a substitute for real relationships; lonely, disconnected people finding companionship or even developing feelings with code is not as much a science fiction scenario as it is just the way things go now. The ultra-wealthy tech bros in charge of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

OK, so ChatGPT helps you write your grocery list. Does your individual convenience outweigh the broader harm it can cause?

How ChatGPT Ruins Dating and Intimacy.

As if it hadn’t done enough already, ChatGPT has somehow made dating even worse. A close acquaintance 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 asked for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who outsources decisions, including the fun ones like choosing where to eat? If someone is so lazy they’ll consult ChatGPT to plan a first date, imagine how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot envision forming a deep, lasting connection with someone who regularly engages with a technology that’s weakening our shared attention spans and possibly heralding total apocalypse. Inquisitiveness, originality, originality – I likely won’t find what I value in someone who thinks “productivity” means prompting an app to summarize a movie plot so they don’t have to spend their time, you know, watching it.

Consider whether your relationship preference genuinely aligns with your long-term objectives.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she does use ChatGPT for particular tasks but is not endorse it. 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 strike against ChatGPT users was too strict. She said no, proceed and evaluate, though it might reduce 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 essential to find someone whose values are in sync with yours.”

Others Who Share the AI Ick.

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 fantasizes about accessing 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 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 split was particularly ugly. She sided with one of them after learning the other went 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 continue, which is not how things work.”

Eventually, I found not handle it on my own. I had become too dependent on AI for the basic tasks.

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and is a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is likewise 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 shouldn’t have 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 Silicon Valley Professionals Speaking Out.

Guillermo del Toro’s statement that he’d “choose death” 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 make statements that are critical of AI in their various industries. I think these quotes spread widely for a reason: people agree with them.

Even, to an extent, the people who run the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users turn off AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely deactivate, comparable content on Instagram. Sources indicated that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley techies won’t use AI to write their code.

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