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It was a scene lifted from a Nancy Meyers movie. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that smelled of stealth wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is perfect,” I remarked to the groom-to-be. He moved closer as if sharing a secret: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

My expression was courteous as he detailed how AI tools helped in the wedding preparations. (A real wedding planner was eventually brought in.) I replied politely. Inside, however, I decided: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding input from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The Latest Dating Dealbreaker.

Some people have typical relationship dealbreakers. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. During the past few months, as alarms of an approaching AI-induced apocalypse have dominated my social media and social conversations, I’ve come up with a new one. I will not date 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 disdain.)

People often 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? 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 people out there for you. But I am not one of them.

From ‘Ick’ to Political Stance.

“Getting the ick” is what we sometimes call being turned off. Part of having an ick is not fully understanding why you considered 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 simple ick, a automatic feeling of disgust that had no any solid 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 political decision. We are aware that the power-hungry tech drains our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is marketed as a substitute for real relationships; 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 ultra-wealthy tech executives in charge of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

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

The Romantic Disaster: If Your Date Uses ChatGPT.

It seems ChatGPT has found a way to make the romantic scene even more challenging. A good friend lately 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 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 minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot imagine forming a deep, lasting connection with someone who frequently engages with a technology that’s kneecapping our shared attention spans and perhaps signaling total apocalypse. Inquisitiveness, creativity, uniqueness – I probably won’t find what I value in someone who believes “productivity” means prompting an app to recap a movie plot so they don’t have to waste their time, you know, watching it.

Consider whether your relationship criterion actually aligns with your life aims.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she does use ChatGPT for particular tasks but is not endorse it. In the past six months or so, she states “every one” of her clients has come her expressing concern 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 users was too strict. She said no, go forth and evaluate, though it might reduce 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 presume that’s one of your values, and it’s essential to find someone whose beliefs are in sync with yours.”

Additional People Voicing AI Apprehensions.

The dislike for AI applies beyond the romantic sphere. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and works in sound for multiple live music venues across the city. She dreams about accessing 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 thinks that using ChatGPT “shows such a laziness”.

“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 messy breakup. She sided with one of them after learning the other went to ChatGPT, a infamously poor therapy alternative, not their partner, when they wanted to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they refused to endure any uncomfortable 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 reliant on AI to do the simplest things [at work].

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

Well-Known Figures and Silicon Valley Professionals Speaking Out.

Guillermo del Toro’s declaration that he’d “choose death” over using AI garnered significant attention. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories rant against the tech warning about “environmental racism” and showing fear over users who are “codependent on a machine”. Ditto still 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 sympathize with them.

This attitude exists even among those in the tech sector. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users turn off AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely deactivate, similar content on Instagram. Sources indicated that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley professionals refuse to use AI to write their code.

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