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The scene could have been taken from a Nancy Meyers film. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that reeked of stealth wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is perfect,” I told the groom-to-be. He leaned in as if revealing a secret: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

I grinned tightly as this man explained using artificial intelligence for the initial stages of organizing the wedding. (They also employed a human wedding planner.) I responded politely. Inside, however, I decided: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding input courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Modern Dating Dealbreakers: AI Use.

Some people have typical relationship non-negotiables. Doesn’t smoke, is a cat person, wants kids. During the past few months, as warnings of an approaching AI-induced doomsday have flooded my news feed and party conversations, I’ve come up with a fresh one. I will not date 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 object of my scorn.)

People often ask the “what if” scenarios. Suppose I use it for my job, but I dislike it otherwise? Imagine if I use it to assist people? What if 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.

How a Minor Turn-Off Turns Into a Moral Issue.

The term “getting the ick” refers to that feeling of being unexpectedly disgusted. Part of having an ick is not fully understanding why you found someone’s behavior so unseemly. For example, I once felt the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. At first, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a mere ick, a kneejerk feeling of disgust that had no any solid reasoning.

But here we are, in fall 2025, and using the program even for harmless tasks such as planning a fitness routine or deciding what to wear feels an more and more political choice. We know that the power-hungry tech drains our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is sold as a substitute for human connection; lonely, detached people discovering companionship or even falling in love with code is not as much a sci-fi 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 helps you write your grocery list. Does your individual convenience outweigh the societal harm it can cause?

The Dating Problem: If Your Date 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 went out 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 get close to someone who outsources 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, imagine how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot imagine 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. Intellectual curiosity, creativity, originality – I probably won’t find what I value in someone who believes “productivity” means asking an app to recap a movie plot so they don’t have to waste their time, you know, watching it.

Reflect on whether your relationship criterion actually aligns with your long-term aims.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she may use ChatGPT for particular tasks but is not endorse it. In the past six months or so, she says “every one” of her clients has approached 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, proceed and judge, though it might reduce my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now utilizes the tech.

“Ask yourself if your preference 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 ChatGPT Aversion.

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

Two of Pereira’s friends recently had a complicated breakup. She sided with one of them after learning the other went to ChatGPT, a infamously awful therapy substitute, not their partner, when they needed to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they refused to sit through any uncomfortable 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 handle it on my own. I had grown too reliant on AI for the routine work.

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, shares similar views. “I don’t know if I would think differently 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.”

Celebrity and Tech Backlash.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “rather die” than use generative AI, it made news. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories rant against the tech cautioning 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 issued statements that are skeptical of AI in their respective industries. I believe 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 introduced a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely deactivate, similar content on Instagram. Reports suggested that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley techies won’t use AI to write their code.

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