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

My expression was polite as he detailed how AI tools helped in the wedding planning. (A human wedding planner was also brought in.) I responded courteously. Inside, though, I resolved: if my future spouse approached to me with wedding ideas from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The Latest Dating Dealbreaker.

Many individuals have usual romantic non-negotiables. Doesn’t smoke, is a cat person, desires kids. During the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced apocalypse have dominated my news feed and social conversations, I’ve developed a fresh one. I will not see someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program really, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the target of my disdain.)

I’ve heard all the “what if’s”. What if I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? What 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 say: there are people out there for you. But I am not one of them.

From Disgust to Political Position.

“Getting the ick” is what we occasionally call being repulsed. Part of having an ick is not fully understanding why you considered 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 simple ick, a kneejerk feeling of disgust that lacked any solid reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for seemingly simple tasks like designing a workout plan or selecting an outfit feels like a deliberate moral decision. We know that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is sold as a placebo for real relationships; isolated, detached people finding companionship or even developing feelings with code is not as much a science fiction scenario 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.

Sure, ChatGPT can create your shopping list. But does that personal advantage excuse the wider negative impact it causes?

How AI Spoils Romance and Connection.

As if it hadn’t done enough already, ChatGPT has in some way made dating even worse. A close acquaintance lately told me that she spent a night 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 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 relationship with a person who consistently uses a tool that diminishes concentration and might bring about societal collapse. Inquisitiveness, creativity, 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 spend their time, you know, watching it.

Ask yourself if your [dating] choice is truly serving your future goals.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based relationship coach, she may use ChatGPT for specific tasks but doesn’t endorse 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 generate 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 utilizes the tech.

“Ask yourself if your choice 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 values are in sync with yours.”

More People Voicing ChatGPT Apprehensions.

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 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 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 friend’s split was especially messy. She supported 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 process something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Eventually, I could not manage it on my own. I had become too dependent on AI for even routine tasks.

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and is 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 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.”

Public Personalities and Silicon Valley Insiders Voicing Concerns.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “rather die” than use AI tools, it made news. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories rant against the tech cautioning about “environmental racism” and expressing 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 sympathize with them.

Even, to an degree, the people who run the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely deactivate, comparable 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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