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The setting could have been taken from a Nancy Meyers production. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that smelled of discreet wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is ideal,” I told the future groom. He leaned in as if revealing a confidential detail: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

I grinned politely as this man described using generative AI for the early stages of planning the wedding. (They also employed a human wedding planner.) I replied courteously. Inside, though, I resolved: if my prospective spouse approached to me with wedding input courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Modern Dating Dealbreakers: Artificial Intelligence Usage.

Some people have common relationship non-negotiables. Doesn’t smoke, is a cat person, wants kids. Over the past few months, as warnings of an impending AI-induced apocalypse have dominated my social media and party conversations, I’ve come up with a new one. I will not see 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 scorn.)

I’ve heard all the “what if’s”. What if I use it for my job, but I dislike it otherwise? What if I use it to help people? What if 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.

From Disgust to Ethical Position.

The term “getting the ick” refers to that feeling of being unexpectedly disgusted. Part of having an ick is not really understanding why you considered 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 had no any solid reasoning.

But here we are, in autumn 2025, and using the program even for benign tasks such as figuring out a fitness routine or choosing what to wear feels an more and more political choice. We know that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is marketed as a substitute for real relationships; lonely, detached 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 bros in control of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

OK, so ChatGPT assists you write your grocery list. Does your personal ease outweigh the societal harm it can cause?

A Dating Problem: When Your Partner Relies on ChatGPT.

As if it had not 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, opened ChatGPT, and asked 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 hit up 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 weakening our shared attention spans and perhaps signaling total apocalypse. Inquisitiveness, creativity, originality – I likely won’t find what I prize in someone who believes “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] preference is truly serving your future goals.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she does use ChatGPT for specific purposes but doesn’t endorse it. In the past six months or so, she says “every one” of her clients has approached her complaining 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 strike 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 really supporting your future goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would presume that’s one of your values, and it’s essential to find someone whose beliefs are aligned with yours.”

Additional Individuals Voicing ChatGPT Apprehensions.

The aversion for AI extends beyond the romantic realm. 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 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 “shows such a lack of initiative”.

“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 discovering the other went 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 difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process something and continue, which is not how things work.”

Suddenly I was unable to do it by myself. I was too reliant on AI to do the most basic things [at work].

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, shares comparable sentiments. “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 probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Celebrity and Industry Resistance.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “prefer death” than use AI tools, it made headlines. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories rant against the tech warning about “environmental racism” and showing 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 skeptical of AI in their various industries. I believe these quotes spread widely for a reason: people agree with them.

This sentiment exists even among those in the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users turn off AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely remove, comparable slop on Instagram. Reports indicated that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley professionals won’t use AI to write their code.

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