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It felt like a scene lifted from a Nancy Meyers film. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that reeked of discreet wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is perfect,” I told the groom-to-be. He leaned in as if revealing a secret: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

My expression was polite as he detailed how AI tools assisted in the wedding planning. (A real wedding planner was also brought in.) I responded courteously. Inside, though, I decided: if my future spouse came to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Contemporary Dating Dealbreakers: Artificial Intelligence Use.

Many individuals have usual relationship dealbreakers. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. Over the past few months, as alarms of an approaching AI-induced apocalypse have dominated my news feed and social conversations, I’ve come up with a fresh one. I refuse to see someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program truly, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the object of my disdain.)

People often ask the “what if” scenarios. What if I use it for my job, but I dislike 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 say: there are people out there for you. But I am not one of them.

When a Minor ‘Ick’ Becomes a Ethical Stand.

“Getting the ick” is what we sometimes call being repulsed. A key aspect of having an ick is not fully understanding why you found someone’s behavior so unseemly. For example, I once felt the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. At first, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a simple ick, a kneejerk feeling of disgust that had no any solid reasoning.

But here we are, in fall 2025, and using the program even for benign tasks such as planning a fitness routine or choosing what to wear feels an more and more political choice. 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, 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 megarich tech executives in charge of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

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

How ChatGPT Spoils Dating and Intimacy.

As if it hadn’t 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 proposed they get breakfast together. He pulled out his phone, accessed ChatGPT, and asked for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who delegates decisions, including the enjoyable ones like picking 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.

It’s difficult to picture myself building a meaningful relationship with a person who consistently uses a tool that diminishes concentration and might bring about societal collapse. Intellectual curiosity, originality, uniqueness – I likely won’t find what I value 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.

Ask yourself if your [dating] preference is truly supporting your future goals.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she may use ChatGPT for specific purposes but doesn’t promote it. In the past six months or so, she says “every one” of her clients has come 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 strict. She said no, go forth and evaluate, though it might limit my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now uses the tech.

“Ask yourself if your choice is truly supporting your long-term goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would assume that’s one of your values, and it’s important to find someone whose values are in sync with yours.”

Others Who Have the ChatGPT Aversion.

The dislike for AI extends beyond the dating sphere. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and does sound for various live music venues across the city. She dreams 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 disable. Pereira thinks that using ChatGPT “shows such a laziness”.

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

A recent acquaintance’s breakup was particularly messy. She sided with one of them after learning the other went to ChatGPT, a notoriously poor therapy substitute, not their partner, when they wanted to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they didn’t want to sit through any uncomfortable human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to deal with something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Suddenly I was unable to 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, shares similar 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 don’t need to depend on it to make a grocery list. Your life is likely not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Public Figures and Tech Insiders Voicing Concerns.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “rather die” than use generative AI, it made headlines. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade against the tech warning 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 make statements that are critical of AI in their various industries. I believe these quotes go viral for a cause: people agree with them.

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