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The setting could have been pulled from a Nancy Meyers film. 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 told the future groom. He moved closer as if sharing a secret: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

My expression was courteous as he detailed how generative AI assisted in the wedding planning. (A human wedding planner was also brought in.) I replied politely. Internally, though, I decided: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding input courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Contemporary Dating Red Flags: AI Use.

Many individuals have usual romantic dealbreakers. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, wants kids. Over the past few months, as warnings of an approaching AI-induced apocalypse have flooded my social media and party conversations, I’ve developed a new one. I refuse to date someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program 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”. 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 respond: there are individuals out there for you. But I am not one of them.

From Disgust to Ethical Stance.

The phrase “getting the ick” refers to that sensation of being unexpectedly disgusted. 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 fall 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 marketed as a substitute for real relationships; isolated, detached people finding 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 bros in charge of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

Sure, ChatGPT can create your shopping list. But does that individual advantage excuse the wider negative impact it causes?

The Romantic Disaster: When Your Partner Relies on ChatGPT.

It appears ChatGPT has managed to make the romantic scene even more challenging. A close acquaintance recently told me that she went out with a man, and in the morning suggested they get breakfast together. He took out his phone, opened 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 consult ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

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

Consider whether your relationship criterion actually fits with your life objectives.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she does use ChatGPT for specific purposes but is not endorse it. 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 create everything on their dating apps – all the way down to the DMs they send. I asked Jackson if my strike against ChatGPT users was too harsh. She said no, proceed and evaluate, though it might limit my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now utilizes 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 principles, and it’s important to find someone whose beliefs are in sync with yours.”

More People Expressing AI Apprehensions.

The dislike for AI applies beyond the romantic sphere. Ana Pereira, 26, resides 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 almost 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 split was especially ugly. She supported one of them after learning the other went to ChatGPT, a infamously poor therapy substitute, not their partner, when they needed to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they refused 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.”

Before long, I could not manage it on my own. I had become too reliant on AI for the routine tasks.

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

Celebrity and Industry Backlash.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “prefer death” than use AI tools, it made headlines. Ditto for, 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 skeptical 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 power the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely deactivate, similar 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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