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The scene could have been pulled from a Nancy Meyers production. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that smelled of discreet wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is perfect,” I told the future groom. He leaned in as if sharing a secret: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

My smile was polite as he outlined how generative AI helped in the wedding planning. (A human wedding planner was also brought in.) I responded politely. Internally, however, I resolved: if my prospective spouse approached to me with wedding ideas from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The New Dating Dealbreaker.

Some people have typical relationship dealbreakers. Doesn’t smoke, is a cat person, wants kids. Over the past few months, as alarms of an approaching AI-induced apocalypse have flooded my news feed and party conversations, I’ve developed a fresh one. I will not date someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool truly, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the target of my scorn.)

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

When a Simple ‘Ick’ Turns Into a Ethical Issue.

“Getting the ick” is what we sometimes call being repulsed. A key aspect 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. At first, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a mere ick, a automatic feeling of disgust that lacked any solid reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for apparently innocent tasks like creating 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 hikes electricity bills. It is sold as a substitute for real relationships; isolated, disconnected 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 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 advantage excuse the collective negative impact 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 close acquaintance recently told me that she spent a night with a man, and in the morning suggested they get breakfast together. He took out his phone, accessed ChatGPT, and requested for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who outsources 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, consider how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot imagine forming a deep, long-term connection with someone who frequently interacts with a technology that’s weakening our shared attention spans and perhaps signaling total apocalypse. Intellectual curiosity, creativity, uniqueness – I likely won’t find what I prize 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.

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

Ali Jackson, a dating and relationship coach located in New York, uses 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 come her complaining 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 chumps was too harsh. She said no, proceed and evaluate, though it might reduce my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now uses the tech.

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

Additional Individuals Expressing AI Concerns.

The dislike for AI applies beyond the romantic realm. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and works in sound for multiple live music venues across the city. She dreams about accessing her phone settings and deactivating 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 rely 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 turned to ChatGPT, a infamously awful therapy alternative, not their partner, when they needed to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they didn’t want to endure any uncomfortable human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to deal with something and continue, which is not how things work.”

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

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and is a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is likewise weary. “I don’t know if I would think otherwise 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.”

Celebrity and Tech Resistance.

Guillermo del Toro’s declaration that he’d “choose death” over using generative AI garnered significant coverage. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade 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 cause: people agree with them.

Even, to an extent, 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, 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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