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It was a scene lifted from a Nancy Meyers film. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that smelled of stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is ideal,” I told the future groom. He moved closer as if sharing a secret: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

My expression was polite as he detailed how AI tools helped in the wedding planning. (A human wedding planner was also brought in.) I replied politely. Internally, though, I decided: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The Latest Dating Non-Negotiable.

Many individuals have usual relationship dealbreakers. Won’t smoke, is a cat person, desires kids. During the past few months, as alarms of an approaching AI-induced apocalypse have flooded my news feed and social conversations, I’ve come up with a fresh one. I refuse to see someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program really, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the target of my disdain.)

I’ve encountered 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? How about 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.

From ‘Ick’ to Ethical Position.

The phrase “getting the ick” describes that feeling of being suddenly turned off. A key aspect of having an ick is not really 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 aversion felt like a simple ick, a automatic feeling of disgust that lacked any solid reasoning.

But here we are, in fall 2025, and using the program even for harmless tasks such as figuring out a fitness routine or deciding what to wear feels an more and more ethical choice. We are aware that the power-hungry tech drains our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is sold as a placebo for human connection; lonely, detached people finding companionship or even developing feelings with code is not as much a science fiction scenario 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.

OK, so ChatGPT assists you write your grocery list. Does your personal ease outweigh the societal harm it can cause?

The Romantic Problem: If Your Partner Relies on ChatGPT.

It appears ChatGPT has found a way to make the romantic scene even more difficult. A good friend lately 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 asked for restaurant suggestions. Why build a relationship with someone who outsources decisions, including the enjoyable ones like picking where to eat? If someone is so lazy they’ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, imagine how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot imagine forming a profound, long-term connection with someone who frequently interacts with a technology that’s kneecapping our collective attention spans and perhaps signaling total apocalypse. Intellectual curiosity, originality, uniqueness – I probably won’t find what I prize in someone who thinks “productivity” means prompting an app to summarize a movie plot so they don’t have to spend their time, you know, watching it.

Ask yourself if your [dating] choice is truly serving your future goals.

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 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 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 utilizes the tech.

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

Others Who Share the AI Aversion.

The dislike for AI extends beyond the dating realm. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and works in 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 nearly impossible to opt out. Pereira believes that using ChatGPT “shows such a laziness”.

“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 supported one of them after discovering the other went to ChatGPT, a infamously awful therapy alternative, not their partner, when they wanted to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they refused to sit through any difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Suddenly I couldn’t do it by myself. I was too dependent 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 shouldn’t have to rely 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 Insiders Voicing Concerns.

Guillermo del Toro’s declaration that he’d “choose death” over using generative AI received significant attention. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade 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 issued statements that are skeptical of AI in their respective industries. I think these quotes spread widely for a cause: people sympathize with them.

This sentiment is present even among those in the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users turn off AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely remove, similar content 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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