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The scene could have been taken from a Nancy Meyers production. We were 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 secret: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

I grinned tightly as this man described 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 future spouse came to me with wedding input courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The Latest Relationship Dealbreaker.

Many individuals have standard relationship non-negotiables. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. Over the past few months, as warnings of an approaching AI-induced doomsday have dominated my social media and party conversations, I’ve developed a fresh one. I refuse to date someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program really, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the target of my scorn.)

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

When a Minor ‘Ick’ Becomes a Moral Issue.

“Getting the ick” is what we sometimes call being turned off. A key aspect of having an ick is not fully understanding why you found someone’s behavior so unseemly. For example, I once got 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 had no any solid reasoning.

But here we are, in autumn 2025, and using the program even for benign tasks such as figuring out a fitness routine or choosing what to wear feels an increasingly ethical choice. We are aware that the energy-intensive tech drains our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is marketed as a placebo for real relationships; lonely, 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.

Sure, ChatGPT can create your shopping list. But does that individual advantage offset the wider negative impact it causes?

How ChatGPT Spoils Dating and Connection.

It seems ChatGPT has managed to make the romantic scene even more difficult. A good friend 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 asked for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who delegates decisions, including the enjoyable ones like picking where to eat? If someone is so unmotivated they’ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, imagine how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot envision forming a profound, long-term connection with someone who frequently engages with a technology that’s weakening 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 prompting an app to summarize a movie plot so they don’t have to waste their time, you know, watching it.

Ask yourself if your [dating] choice is really supporting your future goals.

Ali Jackson, a dating and relationship coach located in New York, uses ChatGPT for some 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 rule against ChatGPT chumps was too strict. She said no, proceed 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 supporting your future goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would assume that’s one of your values, and it’s important to find someone whose values are aligned with yours.”

More People Voicing ChatGPT Apprehensions.

Other people experience the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, lives 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 believes that using ChatGPT “shows such a lack of initiative”.

“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 recently had a complicated breakup. She supported one of them after discovering the other went to ChatGPT, a infamously poor therapy substitute, 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.”

Before long, I could not handle it on my own. I had become too reliant on AI for the basic work.

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, shares similar views. “I don’t know if I would think differently 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 probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Celebrity and Tech Backlash.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “prefer death” than use generative AI, it made news. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade against the tech warning 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 issued statements that are skeptical of AI in their various industries. I believe these quotes spread widely for a cause: people agree with them.

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