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It was a moment straight from a Nancy Meyers film. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that smelled of stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is perfect,” I remarked to the groom-to-be. He leaned in as if sharing a confidential detail: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

My smile was courteous as he detailed how generative AI helped in the wedding preparations. (A real wedding planner was also brought in.) I replied courteously. Inside, though, I resolved: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding ideas from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The Latest Relationship Dealbreaker.

Many individuals have standard relationship dealbreakers. Doesn’t smoke, is a cat person, desires kids. Over the past few months, as alarms of an approaching AI-induced doomsday have dominated my news feed and social conversations, I’ve come up with a new one. I will not date someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program truly, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the target of my scorn.)

I’ve heard all the “what if’s”. Suppose I use it for my job, but I dislike it otherwise? Imagine if I use it to help 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 Minor Turn-Off Becomes a Moral Stand.

The term “getting the ick” refers to that sensation of being unexpectedly turned off. A key aspect of having an ick is not fully understanding why you considered someone’s behavior so unseemly. For instance, I once got the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a simple ick, a automatic 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 conscious political decision. We are aware that the power-hungry tech drains our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is sold as a placebo for real relationships; isolated, disconnected people discovering companionship or even developing feelings with code is not as much a sci-fi plot point as it is just the way things go now. The ultra-wealthy tech executives in charge of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

Sure, ChatGPT can create your shopping list. But does that personal benefit offset the wider damage it creates?

How ChatGPT Ruins Dating and Intimacy.

It seems 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 suggested they get breakfast together. He pulled out his phone, opened ChatGPT, and asked for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to 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, consider how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s hard to see myself building a meaningful relationship with a person who often uses a tool that diminishes focus and might bring about societal collapse. Inquisitiveness, creativity, uniqueness – I likely won’t find what I prize in someone who thinks “productivity” means prompting an app to recap a movie plot so they don’t have to waste their time, you know, watching it.

Consider whether your relationship preference genuinely fits with your life aims.

Ali Jackson, a romantic coach located 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 approached her expressing concern 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 strike against ChatGPT chumps was too strict. She said no, go forth and judge, though it might reduce my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now utilizes the tech.

“Ask yourself if your choice is truly serving your future goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would presume that’s one of your principles, and it’s important to find someone whose values are in sync with yours.”

Others Who Share the ChatGPT Aversion.

The aversion for AI extends beyond the dating sphere. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and works in sound for multiple 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 almost impossible to opt out. Pereira thinks that using ChatGPT “shows such a laziness”.

“It’s like you are unable to think for yourself, and you have to depend on an app for that,” she said.

A recent acquaintance’s breakup was particularly messy. She sided with one of them after discovering the other turned to ChatGPT, a notoriously awful therapy alternative, 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 move on, which is not how things work.”

Eventually, I found not handle it on my own. I had become too reliant on AI for the basic tasks.

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

Celebrity and Tech Resistance.

Guillermo del Toro’s declaration that he’d “rather die” over using AI garnered significant coverage. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade against the tech warning 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 make statements that are critical of AI in their respective industries. I think these quotes go viral for a reason: people agree with them.

Even, to an degree, the people who power the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely remove, similar content on Instagram. Sources suggested that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley professionals won’t use AI to write their code.

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