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It was a moment lifted from a Nancy Meyers film. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that reeked 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 confidential detail: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

My expression was courteous as he outlined how generative AI helped in the wedding planning. (A real wedding planner was eventually brought in.) I responded courteously. Internally, though, I decided: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding input courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Modern Romantic Dealbreakers: AI Usage.

Many individuals have standard relationship dealbreakers. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. Over the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced apocalypse have flooded my social media and social conversations, I’ve developed a fresh one. I refuse to date someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool really, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the object of my scorn.)

I’ve encountered all the “what if’s”. What if I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? Imagine if I use it to help people? How about I only use it as a editing 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.

From ‘Ick’ to Ethical Stance.

“Getting the ick” is what we sometimes call being repulsed. Part of having an ick is not fully understanding why you found someone’s behavior so off-putting. For instance, I once got the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. At first, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a simple ick, a kneejerk feeling of revulsion that lacked any solid reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even using ChatGPT for seemingly simple tasks like designing a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a deliberate political decision. We are aware that the energy-intensive tech drains our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is sold as a placebo for human connection; lonely, disconnected people finding 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 megarich tech executives in control of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

Sure, ChatGPT can generate your shopping list. But does that individual benefit excuse the wider negative impact it creates?

The Dating Problem: When Your Partner Relies on ChatGPT.

It appears ChatGPT has managed to make the dating scene even more challenging. 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 requested 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 consult ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider 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 focus and might lead to societal collapse. Intellectual curiosity, creativity, originality – I likely won’t find what I value in someone who thinks “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 really supporting your long-term goals.

Ali Jackson, a romantic coach based in New York, employs 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 come her expressing concern 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 strike against ChatGPT chumps was too harsh. She said no, go forth and evaluate, though it might reduce my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now uses the tech.

“Ask yourself if your choice is really supporting your future goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would presume that’s one of your principles, and it’s essential to find someone whose values are aligned with yours.”

More Individuals Voicing AI Concerns.

The aversion for AI extends beyond the dating realm. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and does sound for multiple live music venues across the city. She dreams 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 disable. Pereira thinks that using ChatGPT “shows such a laziness”.

“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 learning the other went to ChatGPT, a infamously awful therapy substitute, not their partner, when they wanted 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 was unable to do it by myself. I was too dependent on AI to do the most basic things [at work].

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and works as a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is similarly 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 rely on it to make a grocery list. Your life is likely not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Public Figures and Silicon Valley Professionals Voicing Concerns.

Guillermo del Toro’s statement that he’d “rather die” over using generative 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 make statements that are skeptical of AI in their respective industries. I believe these quotes go viral for a cause: people agree with them.

This attitude is present even among those in the tech sector. 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. 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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