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It felt like a scene straight from a Nancy Meyers film. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that smelled of stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is ideal,” I remarked to the future groom. He leaned in as if revealing a confidential detail: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

My smile was courteous as he detailed how generative AI helped in the wedding planning. (A real wedding planner was also hired.) I responded courteously. Inside, however, I decided: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding input from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The New Relationship Non-Negotiable.

Some people have common relationship non-negotiables. Won’t smoke, is a cat person, desires 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 fresh one. I refuse to date someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool truly, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the object of my scorn.)

I’ve heard all the “what if’s”. Suppose I use it for my job, but I dislike it otherwise? What if I use it to help people? How about 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 Turn-Off Becomes a Ethical Issue.

The phrase “getting the ick” refers to that feeling of being unexpectedly turned off. A key aspect of having an ick is not really understanding why you found someone’s behavior so unseemly. For instance, I once got the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. At first, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a simple ick, a automatic feeling of disgust that lacked any clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even using ChatGPT for seemingly simple tasks like creating a workout plan or selecting an outfit feels like a conscious moral decision. We know that the energy-intensive tech depletes our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is sold as a placebo for real relationships; lonely, detached people discovering companionship or even developing feelings with code is not as much a science fiction plot point as it is just the way things go now. The ultra-wealthy tech bros in charge of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

Sure, ChatGPT can generate your shopping list. But does that individual advantage offset the wider negative impact it creates?

The Romantic Disaster: When Your Partner Uses ChatGPT.

It seems ChatGPT has managed to make the romantic scene even more difficult. A good friend recently told me that she spent a night 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 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, consider how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s hard to picture myself building a meaningful relationship with a person who often uses a tool that diminishes focus and might lead to societal collapse. Intellectual curiosity, originality, originality – I probably 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 waste their time, you know, watching it.

Consider whether your relationship preference actually fits with your long-term aims.

Ali Jackson, a dating and relationship coach based in New York, uses ChatGPT for certain tasks – but she is not an evangelist. 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 rule against ChatGPT chumps 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 choice is really serving 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 aligned with yours.”

Others Who Have the ChatGPT Aversion.

The aversion for AI applies beyond the romantic realm. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and works in sound for multiple live music venues across the city. She fantasizes about accessing her phone settings and disabling AI features on all her apps, though tech platforms from Google to Spotify make it almost impossible to opt out. Pereira thinks that using ChatGPT “shows 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.

A recent acquaintance’s breakup was especially ugly. She sided with one of them after discovering the other went 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 process 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, who is 31 and is a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is likewise 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 shouldn’t have to depend on it to make a grocery list. Your life is probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Well-Known Figures and Tech Professionals Voicing Concerns.

Guillermo del Toro’s declaration that he’d “rather die” over using generative AI received significant attention. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade against the tech warning 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 skeptical of AI in their respective industries. I believe these quotes spread widely for a reason: people agree with them.

This attitude is present even among those in the tech sector. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users turn off AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely deactivate, comparable slop on Instagram. Sources suggested that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley professionals won’t use AI to write their code.

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