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It was a moment lifted from a Nancy Meyers movie. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that reeked of discreet wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is perfect,” I remarked to the future groom. He moved closer as if revealing a secret: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

I smiled tightly as this man explained using artificial intelligence for the initial stages of planning the wedding. (They also hired a professional wedding planner.) I replied courteously. Inside, however, I decided: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding ideas from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Modern Romantic Dealbreakers: Artificial Intelligence Usage.

Some people have typical relationship non-negotiables. Doesn’t smoke, is a cat person, desires kids. Over the past few months, as warnings of an impending AI-induced apocalypse have dominated my news feed and party conversations, I’ve developed a fresh one. I refuse to date someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool truly, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the target of my disdain.)

I’ve encountered all the “what if’s”. What if I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? Imagine 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 people out there for you. But I am not one of them.

How a Simple ‘Ick’ Turns Into a Moral Issue.

The phrase “getting the ick” describes that feeling of being unexpectedly turned off. Part of having an ick is not really 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. At first, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a mere ick, a kneejerk feeling of revulsion that had no any clear reasoning.

But here we are, in fall 2025, and using the program even for harmless tasks such as figuring out a fitness routine or deciding what to wear feels an more and more political choice. We are aware that the energy-intensive tech drains our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is marketed as a substitute for human connection; isolated, detached people finding companionship or even developing feelings with code is not as much a science fiction plot point as it is just the way things go now. The ultra-wealthy 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 individual convenience justify the broader harm it can cause?

How AI Ruins Romance and Intimacy.

As if it had not done enough already, ChatGPT has in some way made dating even worse. A close acquaintance recently told me that she spent a night with a man, and in the morning suggested they get breakfast together. He took out his phone, accessed ChatGPT, and requested for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who outsources decisions, including the enjoyable ones like picking where to eat? If someone is so lazy they’ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s difficult to see myself establishing a significant relationship with a person who often uses a tool that diminishes concentration and might lead to societal collapse. Inquisitiveness, originality, originality – I likely 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.

Reflect on whether your dating preference actually aligns with your long-term objectives.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based relationship coach, she does use ChatGPT for particular tasks but doesn’t promote it. 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 asked Jackson if my strike against ChatGPT chumps was too harsh. She said no, go forth and judge, though it might reduce 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 presume that’s one of your values, and it’s essential to find someone whose values are in sync with yours.”

Others Who Share the AI Aversion.

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 various live music venues across the city. She fantasizes 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 “demonstrates such a laziness”.

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

Two of Pereira’s friends recently had a messy breakup. She sided with one of them after learning the other turned to ChatGPT, a infamously poor therapy alternative, not their partner, when they needed 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 process something and continue, which is not how things work.”

Eventually, I could not manage it on my own. I had become too reliant on AI for even routine work.

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, shares similar sentiments. “I don’t know 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 probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Well-Known Figures and Silicon Valley Insiders Speaking Out.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “rather die” than use generative AI, it made news. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade 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 issued statements that are critical of AI in their respective 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 added a filter that lets users turn off AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely deactivate, similar slop on Instagram. Reports 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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