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It was a moment straight from a Nancy Meyers film. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that reeked of stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is perfect,” I remarked to the future groom. He moved closer as if revealing a confidential detail: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

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

The Latest Relationship Non-Negotiable.

Many individuals have usual romantic dealbreakers. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. During the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced doomsday have dominated my social media and social conversations, I’ve come up with a fresh one. I refuse to see someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program truly, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the object of my scorn.)

I’ve encountered all the “what if’s”. Suppose I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? Imagine if I use it to assist people? How about I only use it as a editing tool – I’d never use it to “write” anything. To all that I respond: there are individuals out there for you. But I am not one of them.

When a Simple Turn-Off Becomes a Ethical Stand.

“Getting the ick” is what we sometimes call being turned off. 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 dislike felt like a mere ick, a kneejerk feeling of revulsion that lacked any clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even using ChatGPT for apparently innocent tasks like designing a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a deliberate political act. We know that the energy-intensive 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 science fiction scenario as it is just the way things go now. The megarich tech executives in charge of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

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

A Dating Problem: When Your Date Uses ChatGPT.

As if it hadn’t done enough already, ChatGPT has somehow made dating even worse. A good friend lately told me that she went out with a man, and in the morning suggested they get breakfast together. He pulled out his phone, accessed 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 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, lasting connection with someone who regularly interacts with a technology that’s kneecapping our shared attention spans and possibly heralding total apocalypse. Intellectual curiosity, originality, originality – I likely won’t find what I prize 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.

Reflect on whether your dating criterion actually fits with your long-term aims.

Ali Jackson, a dating and relationship coach located 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 come 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 inquired Jackson if my strike against ChatGPT users was too strict. She said no, go forth and judge, though it might limit my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now uses 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.”

More Individuals Voicing AI Apprehensions.

Other people experience the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and does sound for various 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 can’t think for yourself, and you have to rely on an app for that,” she said.

Two of Pereira’s friends lately had a complicated breakup. She supported one of them after learning the other turned 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 deal with something and continue, which is not how things work.”

Eventually, I found not manage it on my own. I had become too reliant on AI for the routine tasks.

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and works as a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is similarly skeptical. “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.”

Well-Known Figures and Tech Insiders Voicing Concerns.

Guillermo del Toro’s declaration that he’d “rather die” over using AI garnered significant attention. 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 reason: people sympathize with them.

This sentiment exists even among those in the tech sector. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users turn off 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 professionals refuse to use AI to write their code.

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