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The scene could have been pulled from a Nancy Meyers film. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that reeked of discreet wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is perfect,” I remarked to the future groom. He moved closer as if sharing a confidential detail: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

I smiled politely as this man described using artificial intelligence for the initial stages of organizing the wedding. (They also hired a human wedding planner.) I replied courteously. Internally, though, I decided: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The New Dating Non-Negotiable.

Many individuals have standard romantic non-negotiables. Doesn’t smoke, is a cat person, wants kids. During the past few months, as warnings of an approaching AI-induced doomsday have flooded my news feed and social conversations, I’ve developed a fresh one. I refuse to see someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program truly, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the target of my disdain.)

People often pose the “what if” scenarios. 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 proofreading 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.

“Getting the ick” is what we sometimes call being repulsed. A key aspect of having an ick is not really understanding why you considered someone’s behavior so off-putting. For example, I once got the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a mere ick, a automatic feeling of disgust that lacked any clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for apparently innocent tasks like designing a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a deliberate moral decision. We are aware that the energy-intensive tech depletes our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is marketed as a placebo for human connection; lonely, disconnected people finding companionship or even falling in love with code is not as much a science fiction scenario as it is just the way things go now. The megarich tech bros in control of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

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

How AI Ruins Romance and Connection.

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 suggested they get breakfast together. He pulled out his phone, opened ChatGPT, and asked for restaurant suggestions. Why build a relationship with someone who outsources decisions, including the fun 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.

It’s difficult to see myself establishing a meaningful relationship with a person who consistently uses a tool that erodes concentration and might lead to societal collapse. Intellectual curiosity, creativity, uniqueness – I probably won’t find what I prize in someone who believes “productivity” means prompting an app to recap a movie plot so they don’t have to spend their time, you know, watching it.

Ask yourself if your [dating] preference is truly supporting your long-term goals.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based relationship coach, she may use ChatGPT for specific purposes but doesn’t endorse it. In the past six months or so, she states “every one” of her clients has approached her expressing concern about “chatfishing” or people who use AI to create everything on their dating apps – all the way down to the DMs they send. I inquired Jackson if my rule against ChatGPT users 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 really serving your long-term goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would presume that’s one of your values, and it’s essential to find someone whose beliefs are in sync with yours.”

Others Who Have the AI Aversion.

Other people get the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and works in sound for various 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 disable. Pereira thinks that using ChatGPT “demonstrates such a laziness”.

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

A recent friend’s breakup was especially ugly. She sided with one of them after discovering 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 sit through 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 manage it on my own. I had grown too dependent on AI for even basic work.

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, has comparable sentiments. “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 rely on it to make a grocery list. Your life is likely not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Celebrity and Industry Backlash.

Guillermo del Toro’s declaration that he’d “choose death” over using AI received significant attention. 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 issued statements that are critical of AI in their respective 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 added a filter that lets users disable 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 techies refuse to use AI to write their code.

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