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It felt like a moment straight 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 venue is ideal,” I told the groom-to-be. He leaned in as if sharing a secret: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

I grinned tightly as this person described using artificial intelligence for the initial stages of organizing the wedding. (They also employed a professional wedding planner.) I responded courteously. Internally, though, I decided: if my prospective spouse approached to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The Latest Dating Dealbreaker.

Some people have typical relationship dealbreakers. Won’t smoke, is a cat person, wants kids. Over the past few months, as warnings of an impending AI-induced doomsday have flooded my social media and social conversations, I’ve come up with a new one. I will not date someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool truly, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the object of my disdain.)

People always ask the “what if” questions. Suppose I use it for my job, but I dislike it otherwise? Imagine if I use it to assist people? What if I only use it as a editing tool – I’d never use it to “write” anything. To all that I respond: there are people out there for you. But I am not one of them.

When a Simple Turn-Off Turns Into a Ethical Stand.

“Getting the ick” is what we sometimes call being turned off. A key aspect of having an ick is not really 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 clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for seemingly simple tasks like creating a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a conscious moral decision. We know that the energy-intensive tech depletes our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is marketed as a placebo for real relationships; lonely, detached people discovering 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 executives in control of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

Sure, ChatGPT can create your shopping list. But does that individual advantage excuse the collective damage it causes?

A Romantic Problem: When Your Date Relies on ChatGPT.

As if it had not done enough already, ChatGPT has somehow made dating even worse. A close acquaintance recently told me that she went out 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 delegates decisions, including the enjoyable ones like choosing where to eat? If someone is so unmotivated they’ll consult ChatGPT to plan a first date, imagine how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot envision forming a deep, lasting connection with someone who regularly interacts with a technology that’s kneecapping our collective attention spans and possibly heralding total apocalypse. Inquisitiveness, creativity, originality – I probably won’t find what I prize in someone who thinks “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] preference is really supporting your future goals.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she does use ChatGPT for particular purposes but doesn’t promote it. In the past six months or so, she says “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 asked Jackson if my rule 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 really serving your long-term goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would presume that’s one of your values, and it’s important to find someone whose values are in sync with yours.”

More Individuals Voicing AI Apprehensions.

Other people get the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and does sound for various live music venues across the city. She fantasizes about accessing her phone settings and deactivating 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 lately had a complicated breakup. She supported one of them after discovering the other turned to ChatGPT, a notoriously awful therapy alternative, 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 deal with something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Eventually, I found not handle it on my own. I had grown too dependent on AI for the basic work.

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and works as a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is likewise skeptical. “I am not sure if I would think differently 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 likely not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Celebrity and Industry Resistance.

Guillermo del Toro’s declaration that he’d “choose death” over using AI received significant attention. Similarly, 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 issued statements that are critical of AI in their various industries. I think these quotes go viral for a reason: people sympathize with them.

Even, to an degree, the people who power the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely remove, similar content on Instagram. Reports 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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