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

I smiled politely as this man explained using generative AI for the early stages of planning the wedding. (They also hired a human wedding planner.) I replied politely. Internally, though, I decided: if my future spouse approached to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The New Relationship Dealbreaker.

Many individuals have usual romantic non-negotiables. Won’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 party conversations, I’ve come up with a fresh one. I refuse to see someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program really, 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”. What if I use it for my job, but I dislike it otherwise? What if I use it to help 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.

How a Simple Turn-Off Becomes a Moral Stand.

“Getting the ick” is what we occasionally call being repulsed. Part of having an ick is not fully understanding why you considered someone’s behavior so off-putting. For example, I once got the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. At first, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a mere ick, a automatic feeling of disgust that lacked any solid reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even using ChatGPT for seemingly innocent tasks like designing a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a conscious moral act. We are aware that the energy-intensive tech drains our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is sold as a substitute for human connection; lonely, detached people discovering companionship or even falling in love with code is not as much a sci-fi plot point 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 helps you write your grocery list. Does your personal ease outweigh the societal harm it can cause?

How ChatGPT Spoils Dating and Intimacy.

As if it had not done enough already, ChatGPT has somehow made dating even worse. A good friend lately told me that she spent a night 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 outsources decisions, including the enjoyable ones like choosing where to eat? If someone is so lazy they’ll consult ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot envision forming a deep, long-term connection with someone who regularly engages with a technology that’s weakening our collective attention spans and possibly signaling total apocalypse. Inquisitiveness, creativity, uniqueness – I probably won’t find what I value in someone who thinks “productivity” means asking an app to recap a movie plot so they don’t have to spend their time, you know, watching it.

Ask yourself if your [dating] preference is truly supporting your long-term goals.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she does use ChatGPT for specific tasks 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 chumps was too harsh. She said no, go forth 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 values are aligned with yours.”

Additional Individuals Expressing AI Concerns.

The dislike for AI applies beyond the dating realm. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and does sound for various 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 nearly impossible to opt out. Pereira thinks that using ChatGPT “demonstrates 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.

A recent acquaintance’s breakup was especially ugly. She sided with one of them after discovering the other turned to ChatGPT, a infamously awful therapy alternative, not their partner, when they wanted 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 continue, which is not how things work.”

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

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and is a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is likewise weary. “I don’t know if I would think otherwise 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.”

Well-Known Personalities and Tech Insiders Speaking Out.

Guillermo del Toro’s statement that he’d “rather die” over using AI received significant attention. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade 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 critical of AI in their various industries. I think these quotes go viral for a reason: people agree with them.

Even, to an extent, the people who run the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely remove, comparable slop on Instagram. Sources suggested that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley professionals refuse to use AI to write their code.

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