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It was a scene lifted from a Nancy Meyers film. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that reeked of stealth wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is perfect,” I told the future groom. He moved closer as if sharing a confidential detail: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

My expression was polite as he outlined how AI tools assisted in the wedding preparations. (A real wedding planner was also brought in.) I responded courteously. Internally, however, I resolved: if my future spouse approached to me with wedding ideas from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Contemporary Dating Dealbreakers: AI Usage.

Some people have typical relationship non-negotiables. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, wants kids. Over the past few months, as warnings of an impending AI-induced doomsday have dominated my social media and party conversations, I’ve come up with a new one. I refuse to date someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program really, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the object of my disdain.)

People often ask the “what if” questions. 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 proofreading tool – I’d never use it to “write” anything. To all that I say: there are individuals out there for you. But I am not one of them.

From Disgust to Ethical Position.

The phrase “getting the ick” describes that feeling of being unexpectedly turned off. 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. Initially, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a mere ick, a kneejerk feeling of disgust that had no any solid reasoning.

But here we are, in autumn 2025, and using the program even for benign tasks such as planning a fitness routine or deciding what to wear feels an more and more ethical choice. We are aware that the energy-intensive tech depletes our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is marketed as a substitute for real relationships; lonely, disconnected people discovering companionship or even falling in love with code is not as much a sci-fi scenario as it is just the way things go now. The ultra-wealthy tech executives in charge of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

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

The Dating Problem: If Your Partner Uses ChatGPT.

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 suggested they get breakfast together. He took out his phone, accessed ChatGPT, and requested for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who outsources decisions, including the fun ones like choosing where to eat? If someone is so unmotivated they’ll consult ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s difficult to picture myself establishing a significant relationship with a person who often uses a tool that erodes focus and might bring about societal collapse. Intellectual curiosity, creativity, uniqueness – I likely won’t find what I prize in someone who believes “productivity” means prompting an app to recap a movie plot so they don’t have to waste their time, you know, watching it.

Reflect on whether your relationship criterion actually aligns with your life aims.

Ali Jackson, a romantic coach based in New York, employs ChatGPT for some tasks – but she is not an advocate. 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 users was too harsh. She said no, proceed and evaluate, though it might limit my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now utilizes the tech.

“Ask yourself if your preference is truly serving 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.”

Additional Individuals Voicing ChatGPT Apprehensions.

Other people get the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and does sound for multiple live music venues across the city. She fantasizes about going into 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 “demonstrates such a laziness”.

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

Two of Pereira’s friends lately had a messy breakup. She sided with one of them after learning the other turned to ChatGPT, a notoriously poor therapy substitute, not their partner, when they needed to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they refused to endure any uncomfortable human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Suddenly I couldn’t do it by myself. I was too reliant on AI to do the simplest things [at work].

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, has similar views. “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.”

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 tirade 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 issued statements that are critical of AI in their various industries. I think these quotes spread widely for a cause: people agree with them.

Even, to an degree, the people who power the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users turn off AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely deactivate, similar content on Instagram. Sources 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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