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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 stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is ideal,” I remarked to the future groom. He leaned in as if sharing a confidential detail: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

I smiled tightly as this man described using generative AI for the early stages of organizing the wedding. (They also employed a professional wedding planner.) I replied courteously. Inside, though, I decided: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding input from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Modern Dating Red Flags: Artificial Intelligence Usage.

Many individuals have standard relationship dealbreakers. Won’t smoke, is a cat person, wants 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 new one. I refuse to date someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool really, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the object of my scorn.)

People always pose the “what if” questions. Suppose I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? What 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.

From ‘Ick’ to Political Stance.

“Getting the ick” is what we occasionally call being turned off. A key aspect of having an ick is not fully understanding why you considered someone’s behavior so unseemly. 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 revulsion that had no any clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even using ChatGPT for apparently innocent tasks like creating a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a deliberate moral decision. We are aware that the energy-intensive tech depletes our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is sold as a substitute for human connection; isolated, disconnected 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 think in terms of profit first and people second.

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

The Dating Problem: If Your Partner Relies on ChatGPT.

It appears ChatGPT has managed to make the dating scene even more challenging. A close acquaintance lately told me that she went out with a man, and in the morning suggested they get breakfast together. He took out his phone, opened ChatGPT, and requested for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who outsources decisions, including the fun ones like picking where to eat? If someone is so lazy they’ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot imagine forming a deep, long-term connection with someone who regularly engages with a technology that’s weakening our collective attention spans and perhaps heralding total apocalypse. Intellectual curiosity, creativity, uniqueness – I probably won’t find what I prize in someone who believes “productivity” means asking an app to summarize a movie plot so they don’t have to spend their time, you know, watching it.

Consider whether your dating preference actually fits 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 evangelist. In the past six months or so, she says “every one” of her clients has approached 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 strike against ChatGPT users was too harsh. She said no, proceed and judge, though it might limit my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now utilizes the tech.

“Ask yourself if your preference is really supporting your future goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would assume that’s one of your principles, and it’s important to find someone whose values are in sync with yours.”

More Individuals Expressing ChatGPT Apprehensions.

The aversion for AI extends beyond the dating sphere. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and does sound for multiple live music venues across the city. She dreams 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 disable. Pereira believes that using ChatGPT “shows such a laziness”.

“It’s like you are unable to think for yourself, and you have to rely on an app for that,” she said.

Two of Pereira’s friends lately had a messy breakup. She supported one of them after discovering the other turned to ChatGPT, a infamously awful therapy substitute, 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 simplest things [at work].

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, has comparable sentiments. “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.”

Public Figures and Silicon Valley Insiders Speaking Out.

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

This sentiment exists even among those in the tech sector. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely deactivate, similar content on Instagram. Reports suggested that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley techies refuse to use AI to write their code.

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