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It felt like a scene straight from a Nancy Meyers movie. 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 venue is perfect,” I told the future groom. He leaned in as if sharing a secret: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

My expression was courteous as he detailed how generative AI assisted in the wedding preparations. (A real wedding planner was also hired.) I replied politely. Inside, however, I resolved: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding input courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Modern Romantic Red Flags: Artificial Intelligence Usage.

Many individuals have standard romantic non-negotiables. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. Over the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced apocalypse have flooded my news feed and party conversations, I’ve developed a new one. I refuse to date someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program truly, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the target of my disdain.)

People always ask the “what if” questions. 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 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.

How a Simple ‘Ick’ Becomes a Ethical Issue.

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

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for seemingly innocent tasks like creating a workout plan or selecting an outfit feels like a deliberate moral decision. We are aware that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is sold as a substitute for real relationships; isolated, disconnected 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 prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

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

A Dating Problem: If Your Partner Relies on ChatGPT.

It appears ChatGPT has found a way to make the dating scene even more challenging. A close acquaintance 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 requested for restaurant suggestions. Why build a relationship with someone who outsources decisions, including the enjoyable ones like picking where to eat? If someone is so unmotivated they’ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot envision forming a profound, lasting connection with someone who frequently interacts with a technology that’s weakening our shared attention spans and possibly signaling total apocalypse. Inquisitiveness, creativity, originality – I probably won’t find what I value in someone who believes “productivity” means asking an app to summarize a movie plot so they don’t have to spend their time, you know, watching it.

Reflect on whether your relationship preference actually fits with your long-term objectives.

Ali Jackson, a dating and relationship coach located in New York, uses 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 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, proceed 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 really supporting your long-term goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would presume that’s one of your principles, and it’s important to find someone whose beliefs are in sync with yours.”

More People Voicing ChatGPT Concerns.

Other people get the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and works in sound for multiple live music venues across the city. She dreams about accessing 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 believes that using ChatGPT “shows 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 split was especially messy. She supported one of them after discovering 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 difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to deal with something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Suddenly I couldn’t do it by myself. I was too dependent on AI to do the most basic things [at work].

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and is a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is similarly weary. “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 rely on it to make a grocery list. Your life is probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Well-Known Personalities and Silicon Valley Insiders Speaking Out.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “rather die” than use AI tools, it made news. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories rant 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 make statements that are critical of AI in their respective industries. I believe these quotes spread widely for a reason: people agree with them.

Even, to an degree, the people who power the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users turn off AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely remove, comparable content 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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