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It was a moment straight from a Nancy Meyers film. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that reeked of stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is ideal,” I remarked to the groom-to-be. He moved closer as if sharing a secret: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

My expression was polite as he outlined how generative AI helped in the wedding preparations. (A real wedding planner was eventually brought in.) I responded politely. Internally, though, I resolved: if my future spouse came to me with wedding input courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Modern Dating Dealbreakers: AI Use.

Some people have common relationship non-negotiables. Won’t smoke, is a cat person, desires kids. During the past few months, as alarms of an approaching AI-induced apocalypse have dominated my social media and party conversations, I’ve developed a new one. I refuse to date someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool really, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the target of my scorn.)

I’ve heard all the “what if’s”. Suppose I use it for my job, but I dislike it otherwise? Imagine 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.

When a Simple ‘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 considered someone’s behavior so off-putting. For example, I once felt the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a simple ick, a automatic feeling of disgust that lacked any clear 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 are aware that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is sold as a placebo for human connection; isolated, detached people finding companionship or even developing feelings 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 charge of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

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

How ChatGPT Spoils Dating and Intimacy.

As if it hadn’t done enough already, ChatGPT has in some way made dating even worse. A good friend recently told me that she went out 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 build a relationship with 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 minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s difficult to picture myself building a significant bond with a person who consistently uses a tool that erodes focus and might lead to societal collapse. Inquisitiveness, originality, originality – I likely won’t find what I value in someone who thinks “productivity” means prompting 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 serving your long-term goals.

Ali Jackson, a romantic coach located in New York, employs ChatGPT for some tasks – but she is not an advocate. In the past six months or so, she states “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 inquired Jackson if my strike against ChatGPT users was too strict. She said no, proceed and evaluate, though it might reduce my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now uses the tech.

“Ask yourself if your choice is truly serving 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 in sync with yours.”

Others Who Share the AI Ick.

The dislike for AI extends beyond the dating sphere. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and works in sound for various live music venues across the city. She fantasizes about accessing her phone settings and disabling AI features on all her apps, though tech platforms from Google to Spotify make it almost impossible to opt out. Pereira thinks that using ChatGPT “demonstrates 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 lately had a complicated breakup. She supported one of them after discovering the other turned to ChatGPT, a infamously poor therapy alternative, not their partner, when they wanted 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 move on, which is not how things work.”

Eventually, I found not manage it on my own. I had grown too reliant on AI for even basic work.

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, has comparable views. “I am not sure if I would think otherwise about someone who uses ChatGPT, but I would be like, ‘come on,’” he said. “You shouldn’t have to rely 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 generative AI garnered significant attention. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories rant against the tech warning about “environmental racism” and showing 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 skeptical of AI in their respective industries. I believe these quotes go viral for a reason: people sympathize with them.

Even, to an extent, the people who power the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users turn off AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely deactivate, similar slop on Instagram. Sources indicated that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley techies won’t use AI to write their code.

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