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The setting could have been taken 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 venue is ideal,” I remarked to the groom-to-be. He leaned in as if revealing a confidential detail: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

My expression was polite as he outlined how AI tools assisted in the wedding preparations. (A real wedding planner was also hired.) I replied courteously. Internally, though, I decided: if my prospective spouse approached to me with wedding input courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The New Relationship Non-Negotiable.

Some people have typical relationship dealbreakers. Doesn’t smoke, prefers cat person, wants kids. During the past few months, as alarms of an approaching AI-induced apocalypse have flooded my news feed and social conversations, I’ve developed a fresh one. I will not date someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program really, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the object of my scorn.)

People always ask the “what if” scenarios. 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 say: there are people out there for you. But I am not one of them.

From Disgust to Ethical Stance.

The term “getting the ick” refers to that feeling of being unexpectedly disgusted. A key aspect of having an ick is not fully understanding why you found someone’s behavior so off-putting. For instance, 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 revulsion that lacked any clear reasoning.

But here we are, in autumn 2025, and using the program even for harmless tasks such as figuring out a fitness routine or deciding what to wear feels an increasingly ethical choice. We are aware that the energy-intensive tech depletes our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is marketed as a substitute for human connection; lonely, detached people discovering companionship or even falling in love with code is not as much a science fiction scenario as it is just the way things go now. The megarich tech bros in charge of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

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

The Romantic Disaster: When Your Partner Uses ChatGPT.

As if it hadn’t done enough already, ChatGPT has in some way 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 took out his phone, opened ChatGPT, and requested for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who outsources 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, consider how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot imagine forming a profound, lasting connection with someone who frequently engages with a technology that’s weakening our collective attention spans and possibly heralding total apocalypse. Inquisitiveness, creativity, uniqueness – 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 dating preference actually aligns with your life objectives.

Ali Jackson, a dating and relationship coach based 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 expressing concern 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 chumps was too harsh. She said no, proceed and judge, though it might reduce my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now utilizes 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 essential to find someone whose beliefs are in sync with yours.”

Additional Individuals Expressing ChatGPT Concerns.

Other people experience the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. 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 deactivating AI features on all her apps, though tech platforms from Google to Spotify make it almost impossible to disable. Pereira believes 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 acquaintance’s split was especially messy. She sided with one of them after discovering the other went to ChatGPT, a notoriously awful therapy substitute, not their partner, when they wanted to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they didn’t want to endure any uncomfortable human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Suddenly I was unable to do it by myself. I was too reliant on AI to do the simplest things [at work].

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, has similar views. “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.”

Public Figures and Tech Professionals 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 showing 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 skeptical of AI in their respective industries. I believe these quotes go viral for a reason: people agree with them.

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