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The setting could have been taken from a Nancy Meyers production. We were 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 sharing a confidential detail: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

My smile was courteous as he detailed how AI tools assisted in the wedding preparations. (A human wedding planner was eventually brought in.) I responded courteously. Inside, though, I decided: if my future spouse approached to me with wedding ideas from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Contemporary Dating Dealbreakers: Artificial Intelligence Usage.

Some people have typical relationship non-negotiables. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. Over the past few months, as warnings of an impending AI-induced doomsday have flooded my news feed and party conversations, I’ve come up with a fresh one. I will not see someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool really, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the target of my disdain.)

I’ve heard all the “what if’s”. 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 proofreading tool – I’d never use it to “write” anything. To all that I say: there are individuals out there for you. But I am not one of them.

From ‘Ick’ to Ethical Position.

“Getting the ick” is what we occasionally call being repulsed. A key aspect of having an ick is not fully understanding why you found someone’s behavior so off-putting. For example, I once felt the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. At first, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a simple ick, a automatic feeling of disgust that lacked any solid reasoning.

But here we are, in autumn 2025, and using the tool even for harmless tasks such as figuring out a fitness routine or deciding what to wear feels an more and more ethical choice. We are aware that the energy-intensive tech depletes our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is sold as a placebo for human connection; isolated, detached people finding companionship or even developing feelings with code is not as much a sci-fi plot point as it is just the way things go now. The megarich tech bros in charge of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

Sure, ChatGPT can create your shopping list. But does that personal advantage offset the wider damage it creates?

A Romantic Disaster: When Your Partner Uses ChatGPT.

As if it had not done enough already, ChatGPT has in some way made dating even worse. A close acquaintance lately told me that she spent a night with a man, and in the morning proposed they get breakfast together. He took out his phone, accessed ChatGPT, and asked 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 unmotivated they’ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, imagine how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s difficult to see myself building a meaningful relationship with a person who often uses a tool that diminishes focus and might bring about societal collapse. 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 waste their time, you know, watching it.

Consider whether your dating preference genuinely fits with your long-term aims.

Ali Jackson, a romantic coach based in New York, uses ChatGPT for some 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 create everything on their dating apps – all the way down to the DMs they send. I asked Jackson if my strike against ChatGPT chumps was too harsh. She said no, go forth and evaluate, though it might reduce 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 presume that’s one of your principles, and it’s essential to find someone whose values are in sync with yours.”

More Individuals Voicing AI Concerns.

The dislike for AI extends beyond the dating realm. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and works in 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 almost impossible to opt out. Pereira thinks that using ChatGPT “demonstrates such a lack of initiative”.

“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 complicated breakup. She sided with one of them after learning the other turned to ChatGPT, a notoriously poor therapy alternative, 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 process something and continue, 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 am not sure if I would think differently about someone who uses ChatGPT, but I would be like, ‘come on,’” he said. “You don’t need to rely on it to make a grocery list. Your life is likely not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Celebrity and Tech Backlash.

Guillermo del Toro’s declaration that he’d “choose death” over using AI received significant coverage. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories rant against the tech warning about “environmental racism” and expressing 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 go viral for a reason: 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 hide, but not entirely remove, similar slop on Instagram. Reports suggested that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley professionals won’t use AI to write their code.

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