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The scene could have been pulled from a Nancy Meyers film. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that reeked of discreet wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is perfect,” I remarked to the future groom. He moved closer as if revealing a confidential detail: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

I grinned tightly as this person explained using artificial intelligence for the early stages of planning the wedding. (They also hired a human wedding planner.) I responded courteously. Inside, though, I decided: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding ideas from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Modern Dating Dealbreakers: AI Use.

Many individuals have usual relationship non-negotiables. Won’t smoke, is a cat person, wants kids. Over 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 see someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool truly, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the target of my scorn.)

People always ask the “what if” questions. What if I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? Imagine if I use it to help people? What if I only use it as a editing tool – I’d never use it to “write” anything. To all that I say: there are individuals out there for you. But I am not one of them.

From ‘Ick’ to Political Stance.

The phrase “getting the ick” describes that feeling of being suddenly turned off. Part of having an ick is not really understanding why you found someone’s behavior so off-putting. For instance, I once got the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, 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 tool even for harmless tasks such as planning a fitness routine or choosing what to wear feels an more and more political choice. We know that the energy-intensive tech drains our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is sold as a substitute for human connection; isolated, detached people discovering 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 control of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

Sure, ChatGPT can create your shopping list. But does that individual benefit offset the wider damage it causes?

A Romantic Problem: If Your Partner Uses ChatGPT.

It appears ChatGPT has managed to make the dating scene even more challenging. A good friend recently told me that she spent a night with a man, and in the morning suggested they get breakfast together. He pulled out his phone, opened ChatGPT, and requested for restaurant suggestions. Why build a relationship with someone who delegates 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 envision forming a deep, lasting connection with someone who regularly interacts with a technology that’s kneecapping our collective attention spans and perhaps signaling total apocalypse. Inquisitiveness, creativity, 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 spend their time, you know, watching it.

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

Ali Jackson, a dating and relationship coach located in New York, employs ChatGPT for some tasks – but she is not an evangelist. 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 users was too strict. She said no, go forth and judge, though it might reduce my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now uses the tech.

“Ask yourself if your choice is truly serving your long-term goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would presume that’s one of your values, and it’s important to find someone whose values are in sync with yours.”

Others Who Share the AI Aversion.

The dislike for AI extends beyond the dating sphere. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and works in sound for multiple live music venues across the city. She fantasizes about going into her phone settings and deactivating 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 lack of initiative”.

“It’s like you can’t think for yourself, and you have to depend on an app for that,” she said.

Two of Pereira’s friends lately had a complicated breakup. She sided with one of them after learning the other went to ChatGPT, a notoriously awful therapy alternative, not their partner, when they wanted to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they didn’t want to sit through any uncomfortable human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process something and continue, which is not how things work.”

Eventually, I could not handle it on my own. I had become too reliant on AI for the basic tasks.

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, has comparable 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 probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Public Personalities and Tech Insiders Voicing Concerns.

Guillermo del Toro’s statement that he’d “choose death” over using generative AI garnered significant coverage. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories rant against the tech warning about “environmental racism” and showing 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 critical of AI in their respective industries. I believe these quotes spread widely for a reason: people agree with them.

Even, to an degree, 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 deactivate, comparable slop on Instagram. Reports indicated that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley professionals won’t use AI to write their code.

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