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It felt like a moment lifted from a Nancy Meyers movie. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that reeked of stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is ideal,” I told the groom-to-be. He moved closer as if revealing a secret: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

I smiled politely as this person described using generative AI for the early stages of planning the wedding. (They also hired a professional wedding planner.) I responded politely. Inside, though, I resolved: if my future spouse came to me with wedding input from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The New Dating Dealbreaker.

Many individuals have standard relationship non-negotiables. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. During the past few months, as warnings of an approaching AI-induced doomsday have dominated my social media and party conversations, I’ve developed a new one. I refuse to date someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool truly, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the object of my disdain.)

I’ve encountered all the “what if’s”. What if I use it for my job, but I dislike 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 respond: there are individuals out there for you. But I am not one of them.

How a Minor ‘Ick’ Turns Into a Ethical Stand.

The phrase “getting the ick” describes that feeling of being unexpectedly disgusted. Part 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 mere ick, a automatic feeling of disgust that lacked any clear reasoning.

But here we are, in autumn 2025, and using the program even for benign tasks such as planning a fitness routine or deciding what to wear feels an increasingly ethical 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 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 bros in control of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

Sure, ChatGPT can create your shopping list. But does that personal benefit offset the collective negative impact it causes?

A Dating Disaster: When Your Partner Uses ChatGPT.

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

It’s difficult to picture myself establishing a meaningful bond with a person who consistently uses a tool that diminishes concentration and might bring about societal collapse. Intellectual curiosity, originality, uniqueness – 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 waste their time, you know, watching it.

Consider whether your dating criterion genuinely aligns with your life aims.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based relationship coach, she may use ChatGPT for particular purposes but doesn’t endorse it. 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 inquired Jackson if my strike against ChatGPT users was too strict. She said no, proceed and evaluate, 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 future goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would presume that’s one of your principles, and it’s important to find someone whose beliefs are in sync with yours.”

Additional Individuals Expressing AI Concerns.

The aversion for AI applies beyond the romantic realm. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and does sound for multiple 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 almost impossible to disable. Pereira believes that using ChatGPT “demonstrates such a lack of initiative”.

“It’s like you are unable to think for yourself, and you have to depend on an app for that,” she said.

Two of Pereira’s friends lately had a messy breakup. She supported 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 refused to sit through any uncomfortable human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process something and continue, which is not how things work.”

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

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, shares comparable sentiments. “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 rely on it to make a grocery list. Your life is probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Public Personalities and Tech Insiders Speaking Out.

Guillermo del Toro’s statement that he’d “choose death” over using AI garnered significant attention. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories rant 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 make statements that are skeptical of AI in their various industries. I think 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 mute, but not entirely remove, similar 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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