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It was a moment lifted from a Nancy Meyers film. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that smelled of discreet wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is ideal,” I told the future groom. He leaned in as if sharing a confidential detail: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

My smile was courteous as he detailed how generative AI helped in the wedding preparations. (A real wedding planner was also hired.) I replied politely. Internally, though, I decided: if my future spouse approached to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The Latest Relationship Dealbreaker.

Many individuals have standard relationship dealbreakers. Doesn’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. During the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced apocalypse have flooded my social media and social conversations, I’ve developed a fresh one. I refuse to date someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program truly, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the object of my scorn.)

I’ve heard all the “what if’s”. Suppose I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? What if I use it to help people? What if I only use it as a proofreading tool – I’d never use it to “write” anything. To all that I say: there are people out there for you. But I am not one of them.

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

“Getting the ick” is what we occasionally call being turned off. Part of having an ick is not fully understanding why you considered someone’s behavior so off-putting. For instance, 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 lacked any clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even using ChatGPT for apparently simple tasks like creating a workout plan or selecting an outfit feels like a conscious moral decision. We are aware that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is marketed as a placebo for human connection; lonely, disconnected people discovering companionship or even falling in love with code is not as much a sci-fi scenario 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 helps you write your grocery list. Does your personal ease justify the societal harm it can cause?

How AI Spoils Romance and Intimacy.

As if it hadn’t done enough already, ChatGPT has somehow made dating even worse. A good friend recently told me that she went out with a man, and in the morning proposed they get breakfast together. He pulled out his phone, accessed ChatGPT, and requested for restaurant suggestions. Why build a relationship with someone who delegates decisions, including the fun ones like choosing where to eat? If someone is so unmotivated they’ll consult ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

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

Consider whether your relationship preference genuinely aligns with your long-term aims.

Ali Jackson, a dating and relationship coach located in New York, employs ChatGPT for some tasks – but she is not an advocate. In the past six months or so, she says “every one” of her clients has come 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 asked Jackson if my rule against ChatGPT users was too harsh. She said no, go forth and evaluate, though it might reduce my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now utilizes the tech.

“Ask yourself if your choice is really serving your future goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would assume that’s one of your principles, and it’s important to find someone whose beliefs are aligned with yours.”

Others Who Share the AI Aversion.

Other people experience 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 nearly impossible to disable. Pereira thinks 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.

Two of Pereira’s friends recently had a complicated breakup. She sided with one of them after learning the other turned to ChatGPT, a notoriously awful therapy alternative, not their partner, when they wanted to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they refused to endure any uncomfortable human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process something and continue, which is not how things work.”

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

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and works as a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is similarly skeptical. “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 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.

Guillermo del Toro’s statement that he’d “choose death” over using generative AI received significant coverage. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories rant against the tech cautioning 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 make statements that are skeptical of AI in their various industries. I believe these quotes spread widely for a reason: people sympathize with them.

This attitude exists even among those in the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely deactivate, comparable content on Instagram. Sources indicated that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley techies refuse to use AI to write their code.

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