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The setting could have been pulled from a Nancy Meyers production. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that smelled of stealth wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is perfect,” I told the future groom. He leaned in as if sharing a confidential detail: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

I grinned tightly as this person described using artificial intelligence for the initial stages of organizing the wedding. (They also employed a professional wedding planner.) I replied politely. Internally, however, I resolved: if my future spouse approached to me with wedding input courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The Latest Dating Dealbreaker.

Many individuals have usual romantic dealbreakers. Won’t smoke, is a cat person, wants kids. Over the past few months, as warnings of an approaching AI-induced doomsday have dominated my news feed and social conversations, I’ve developed a new one. I will not 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 object of my scorn.)

People often ask the “what if” scenarios. Suppose I use it for my job, but I dislike it otherwise? Imagine if I use it to help people? What if 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.

How a Simple Turn-Off Turns Into a Moral Stand.

“Getting the ick” is what we occasionally call being repulsed. A key aspect of having an ick is not really 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. Initially, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a simple ick, a kneejerk feeling of disgust that lacked any clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for seemingly innocent tasks like creating a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a conscious political act. We know that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is marketed as a placebo for real relationships; isolated, disconnected people discovering 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 megarich tech executives in control of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

Sure, ChatGPT can generate your shopping list. But does that personal advantage excuse the collective damage it creates?

How ChatGPT Spoils Dating and Connection.

It appears ChatGPT has managed to make the romantic scene even more challenging. A good friend lately told me that she went out with a man, and in the morning suggested they get breakfast together. He took out his phone, accessed ChatGPT, and asked for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who delegates decisions, including the enjoyable ones like choosing where to eat? If someone is so unmotivated they’ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, imagine how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot envision forming a profound, lasting connection with someone who frequently engages with a technology that’s kneecapping our collective attention spans and possibly heralding total apocalypse. Intellectual curiosity, originality, uniqueness – I probably won’t find what I prize 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.

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

Ali Jackson, a romantic coach located in New York, employs ChatGPT for some tasks – but she is not an evangelist. 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 generate everything on their dating apps – all the way down to the DMs they send. I inquired Jackson if my rule against ChatGPT users was too harsh. She said no, go forth and judge, though it might limit my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now uses the tech.

“Ask yourself if your preference is really 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.”

More Individuals Expressing ChatGPT Apprehensions.

The aversion for AI extends beyond the dating realm. 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 disabling AI features on all her apps, though tech platforms from Google to Spotify make it nearly impossible to disable. Pereira thinks that using ChatGPT “demonstrates 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 friend’s split was particularly messy. She sided with one of them after learning the other turned to ChatGPT, a infamously poor therapy substitute, not their partner, when they needed to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they didn’t want to endure 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 dependent on AI to do the simplest things [at work].

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, shares similar 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 Tech Resistance.

Guillermo del Toro’s declaration that he’d “choose death” over using AI received significant attention. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade against the tech warning about “environmental racism” and expressing 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 critical of AI in their various industries. I think these quotes spread widely for a reason: people sympathize with them.

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