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It felt like a moment lifted from a Nancy Meyers film. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that smelled of stealth wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is ideal,” I remarked to the future groom. He moved closer as if revealing a confidential detail: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

My expression was courteous as he outlined how generative AI helped in the wedding planning. (A real wedding planner was eventually brought in.) I responded courteously. Inside, however, I resolved: if my future spouse approached to me with wedding ideas from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The New Dating Non-Negotiable.

Many individuals have usual relationship non-negotiables. Doesn’t smoke, is a cat person, desires kids. Over the past few months, as warnings of an approaching AI-induced doomsday have dominated my news feed and party conversations, I’ve come up with a fresh one. I refuse to see someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program truly, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the object of my disdain.)

People often ask the “what if” scenarios. Suppose I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? What if I use it to assist people? How about I only use it as a editing 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 Stance.

“Getting the ick” is what we sometimes call being repulsed. Part of having an ick is not really 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 aversion felt like a mere ick, a automatic feeling of disgust that lacked any clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for apparently simple tasks like designing a workout plan or selecting an outfit feels like a conscious political act. We are aware that the power-hungry tech drains our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is sold as a substitute for human connection; lonely, disconnected 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 megarich tech executives in control of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

OK, so ChatGPT helps you write your grocery list. Does your individual convenience outweigh the societal harm it can cause?

The Romantic Problem: If Your Partner Relies on ChatGPT.

As if it had not done enough already, ChatGPT has somehow made dating even worse. A close acquaintance lately told me that she went out with a man, and in the morning suggested they get breakfast together. He pulled out his phone, accessed ChatGPT, and asked for restaurant suggestions. Why build a relationship with someone who delegates decisions, including the enjoyable 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 imagine forming a deep, lasting connection with someone who frequently interacts with a technology that’s kneecapping our collective attention spans and perhaps signaling total apocalypse. Inquisitiveness, originality, uniqueness – I likely won’t find what I prize in someone who believes “productivity” means asking 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 long-term aims.

Ali Jackson, a dating and relationship coach based in New York, uses 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 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 inquired Jackson if my strike against ChatGPT chumps was too harsh. She said no, proceed and judge, though it might reduce my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now uses the tech.

“Ask yourself if your preference is truly supporting your long-term 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 Expressing ChatGPT Concerns.

Other people get the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, resides 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 “shows such a laziness”.

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

A recent friend’s breakup was especially ugly. She sided with one of them after discovering the other turned to ChatGPT, a notoriously awful therapy substitute, 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 process something and continue, which is not how things work.”

Suddenly I couldn’t 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 similar sentiments. “I am not sure if I would think otherwise 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 likely not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Well-Known Figures and Tech Professionals Voicing Concerns.

Guillermo del Toro’s declaration that he’d “choose death” over using AI garnered significant coverage. 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”. Ditto still for when Simu Liu, Alison Roman, Céline Dion, Emily Blunt, and others issued statements that are critical of AI in their respective industries. I believe these quotes go viral for a reason: people agree with them.

This sentiment exists even among those in the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely deactivate, comparable slop on Instagram. Reports suggested that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley techies refuse to use AI to write their code.

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