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The scene could have been pulled from a Nancy Meyers production. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that reeked of discreet wealth, for a close 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.”

My expression was courteous as he detailed how generative AI helped in the wedding preparations. (A real wedding planner was also brought in.) I responded politely. Internally, however, I resolved: if my future spouse approached to me with wedding input from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The Latest Dating Dealbreaker.

Some people have common relationship non-negotiables. Won’t smoke, is a cat person, desires kids. During the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced doomsday have flooded my social media and party conversations, I’ve come up with a new one. I will not date someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program really, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the target of my scorn.)

People always ask the “what if” scenarios. What if I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? What 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 people out there for you. But I am not one of them.

From ‘Ick’ to Political Stance.

“Getting the ick” is what we occasionally call being repulsed. A key aspect of having an ick is not fully understanding why you considered someone’s behavior so off-putting. For example, I once felt the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a mere ick, a automatic feeling of revulsion that had no any clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even using ChatGPT for apparently simple tasks like designing a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a conscious moral decision. 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 finding companionship or even falling in love with code is not as much a science fiction scenario 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.

OK, so ChatGPT assists you write your grocery list. Does your personal convenience justify the broader harm it can cause?

A Romantic Disaster: When Your Partner Relies on ChatGPT.

As if it had not done enough already, ChatGPT has somehow made dating even worse. A close acquaintance 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 requested 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 unmotivated they’ll consult ChatGPT to plan a first date, imagine how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot envision forming a deep, long-term connection with someone who frequently interacts with a technology that’s weakening our shared attention spans and perhaps heralding total apocalypse. Inquisitiveness, originality, originality – I likely won’t find what I value in someone who thinks “productivity” means prompting an app to recap a movie plot so they don’t have to spend their time, you know, watching it.

Consider whether your relationship criterion actually aligns with your long-term objectives.

Ali Jackson, a dating and relationship coach based in New York, employs ChatGPT for certain tasks – but she is not an advocate. In the past six months or so, she states “every one” of her clients has approached her complaining about “chatfishing” or people who use AI to create everything on their dating apps – all the way down to the DMs they send. I asked Jackson if my rule against ChatGPT chumps was too harsh. She said no, proceed 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 supporting your future 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 AI Aversion.

The aversion for AI applies 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 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 “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.

Two of Pereira’s friends lately had a complicated breakup. She sided with one of them after discovering the other went to ChatGPT, a notoriously poor therapy substitute, not their partner, when they needed to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they refused to endure any difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to deal with something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Before long, I found not manage it on my own. I had grown too dependent on AI for even basic work.

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, has 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 depend on it to make a grocery list. Your life is likely not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Celebrity and Industry Backlash.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “rather die” than use AI tools, it made news. Similarly, 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 make statements that are critical of AI in their various industries. I believe these quotes spread widely for a cause: people agree with them.

This attitude exists even among those in the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely deactivate, similar content on Instagram. Sources indicated that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley techies won’t use AI to write their code.

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