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The scene could have been pulled from a Nancy Meyers film. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that smelled of discreet wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is ideal,” I remarked to the groom-to-be. He moved closer as if sharing a confidential detail: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

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

Modern Dating Dealbreakers: Artificial Intelligence Usage.

Many individuals have usual romantic non-negotiables. Doesn’t smoke, prefers cat person, wants kids. Over the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced doomsday have flooded my news feed and party conversations, I’ve come up with a new one. I will not see someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program really, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the object of my scorn.)

I’ve encountered all the “what if’s”. Suppose I use it for my job, but I dislike it otherwise? What if I use it to assist people? What if I only use it as a proofreading 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 Position.

The term “getting the ick” refers to that feeling of being suddenly turned off. A key aspect of having an ick is not fully understanding why you considered someone’s behavior so off-putting. For example, I once got the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. At first, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a mere 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 deciding what to wear feels an more and more ethical choice. We know that the energy-intensive tech depletes our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is marketed as a substitute for real relationships; lonely, detached people discovering 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 executives 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 benefit offset the collective negative impact it causes?

A Romantic Disaster: When Your Date Relies on ChatGPT.

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

I just cannot envision forming a profound, lasting connection with someone who frequently interacts with a technology that’s weakening our shared attention spans and perhaps signaling total apocalypse. Intellectual curiosity, originality, 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.

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

Ali Jackson, a romantic coach located in New York, uses ChatGPT for some tasks – but she is not an advocate. 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 inquired Jackson if my strike 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 uses the tech.

“Ask yourself if your preference is truly serving your long-term goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would assume that’s one of your values, and it’s essential to find someone whose beliefs are aligned with yours.”

Others Who Have the ChatGPT Aversion.

The dislike for AI extends beyond the dating sphere. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and works in sound for various live music venues across the city. She dreams about accessing her phone settings and disabling AI features on all her apps, though tech platforms from Google to Spotify make it nearly impossible to opt out. Pereira believes that using ChatGPT “demonstrates 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 breakup was especially messy. She supported one of them after discovering the other went to ChatGPT, a notoriously poor therapy substitute, not their partner, when they wanted to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they didn’t want to sit through any difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process something and continue, which is not how things work.”

Suddenly I couldn’t do it by myself. I was too dependent on AI to do the simplest things [at work].

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and works as a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is similarly weary. “I am not sure if I would think otherwise about someone who uses ChatGPT, but I would be like, ‘come on,’” he said. “You don’t need to rely on it to make a grocery list. Your life is probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Celebrity and Tech Backlash.

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 think these quotes spread widely 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 turn off AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely remove, similar content 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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