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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 close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is perfect,” I told the groom-to-be. He leaned in as if sharing a confidential detail: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

My expression was polite as he detailed how AI tools assisted in the wedding planning. (A human wedding planner was also hired.) I replied politely. Internally, though, I decided: if my future spouse approached to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Contemporary Romantic Dealbreakers: AI Usage.

Some people have typical relationship dealbreakers. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. During the past few months, as warnings of an impending AI-induced doomsday have dominated my news feed and social conversations, I’ve come up with a new one. I will not see someone who employs 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.)

People always pose the “what if” scenarios. Suppose 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 people out there for you. But I am not one of them.

From ‘Ick’ to Ethical Position.

The phrase “getting the ick” describes that sensation of being unexpectedly turned off. A key aspect 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. Initially, my ChatGPT dislike 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 program even for benign tasks such as figuring out a fitness routine or deciding what to wear feels an more and more ethical choice. We are aware that the power-hungry tech drains our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is marketed as a placebo for human connection; lonely, detached people finding companionship or even developing feelings with code is not as much a science fiction plot point as it is just the way things go now. The megarich tech executives in charge of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

Sure, ChatGPT can create your shopping list. But does that personal advantage excuse the collective damage it causes?

How ChatGPT Spoils Dating and Intimacy.

As if it hadn’t 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 enjoyable ones like choosing where to eat? If someone is so lazy they’ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, imagine how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s hard to picture myself establishing a meaningful relationship with a person who consistently uses a tool that erodes concentration and might bring about societal collapse. Intellectual curiosity, originality, originality – I probably won’t find what I value in someone who believes “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] preference is really supporting your long-term goals.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she does use ChatGPT for specific tasks but is not promote it. In the past six months or so, she states “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 asked Jackson if my rule against ChatGPT users 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 preference is truly supporting your future goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would presume that’s one of your values, and it’s essential to find someone whose values are aligned with yours.”

Others Who Have the ChatGPT Aversion.

The dislike for AI applies beyond the dating realm. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and works in sound for various 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 nearly impossible to disable. Pereira thinks that using ChatGPT “shows such a lack of initiative”.

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

Two of Pereira’s friends lately had a complicated breakup. She supported one of them after discovering 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 didn’t want to sit through any difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to deal with something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Eventually, I found not handle it on my own. I had grown too reliant on AI for the routine work.

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 differently 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 probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Well-Known Personalities and Silicon Valley Professionals Speaking Out.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “rather die” than use AI tools, it made headlines. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories rant against the tech cautioning about “environmental racism” and showing 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 skeptical of AI in their various industries. I think these quotes go viral for a cause: 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 hide, but not entirely remove, similar slop on Instagram. Reports suggested that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley techies won’t use AI to write their code.

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