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The setting could have been pulled 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 venue is ideal,” I remarked to the groom-to-be. He moved closer as if revealing a confidential detail: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

I grinned politely as this man described using generative AI for the early stages of organizing the wedding. (They also employed a human wedding planner.) I responded politely. Internally, however, I resolved: if my future spouse came to me with wedding input courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The New Relationship Dealbreaker.

Many individuals have usual relationship dealbreakers. Won’t smoke, is a cat person, wants kids. Over the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced doomsday have flooded my news feed and party conversations, I’ve come up with 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 dominant and thus the target of my disdain.)

People often ask the “what if” scenarios. What if I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? Imagine 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 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 unseemly. For example, I once felt the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a mere ick, a kneejerk feeling of revulsion that had no any clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for seemingly innocent tasks like designing a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a deliberate moral decision. We know that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is sold as a substitute for human connection; lonely, detached 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 bros in control of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

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

A Dating Disaster: If Your Partner Relies on ChatGPT.

It seems ChatGPT has managed to make the romantic scene even more challenging. A good friend lately told me that she spent a night with a man, and in the morning proposed they get breakfast together. He took out his phone, accessed ChatGPT, and asked for restaurant suggestions. Why build a relationship with someone who delegates 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 little effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s difficult to picture myself building a meaningful bond with a person who consistently uses a tool that erodes concentration and might lead to societal collapse. 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 waste their time, you know, watching it.

Ask yourself if your [dating] preference is truly supporting your future goals.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she may use ChatGPT for particular purposes but doesn’t endorse it. 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 asked Jackson if my strike against ChatGPT users was too harsh. 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 supporting your future goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would assume that’s one of your values, and it’s essential to find someone whose values are in sync with yours.”

Others Who Have the ChatGPT Aversion.

Other people get the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and works in sound for various live music venues across the city. She fantasizes about going into her phone settings and deactivating AI features on all her apps, though tech platforms from Google to Spotify make it nearly impossible to disable. 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 acquaintance’s split was especially ugly. 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 sit through any uncomfortable human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Before long, I found not manage it on my own. I had become too reliant on AI for even basic 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 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 probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Well-Known Figures and Silicon Valley Insiders Voicing Concerns.

Guillermo del Toro’s declaration that he’d “choose death” over using AI received significant attention. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade 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 skeptical of AI in their various industries. I think these quotes spread widely for a cause: people sympathize with them.

Even, to an extent, the people who run the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users turn off AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely remove, similar content 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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