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It was a scene lifted from a Nancy Meyers movie. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that reeked of stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is ideal,” I told the future groom. He moved closer as if sharing a confidential detail: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

My expression was polite as he detailed how generative AI assisted in the wedding planning. (A real wedding planner was also brought in.) I replied courteously. Internally, however, I resolved: if my future spouse approached to me with wedding input from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The Latest Dating Non-Negotiable.

Many individuals have usual romantic non-negotiables. Won’t smoke, is a cat person, desires kids. During the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced doomsday have dominated my news feed and social conversations, I’ve developed a new one. I will not see someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program really, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the object of my disdain.)

People often pose the “what if” scenarios. What if I use it for my job, but I dislike it otherwise? What if I use it to assist people? What if I only use it as a editing 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 Disgust to Political Position.

The phrase “getting the ick” refers to that sensation of being suddenly disgusted. A key aspect of having an ick is not really understanding why you considered someone’s behavior so off-putting. For instance, 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 revulsion that lacked any clear reasoning.

But here we are, in fall 2025, and using the tool even for benign tasks such as planning a fitness routine or deciding what to wear feels an increasingly ethical choice. We are aware that the energy-intensive tech drains our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is sold as a substitute for real relationships; isolated, disconnected people discovering companionship or even developing feelings 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 prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

Sure, ChatGPT can create your shopping list. But does that individual benefit excuse the collective damage it creates?

How ChatGPT Ruins Romance and Intimacy.

As if it hadn’t done enough already, ChatGPT has in some way made dating even worse. A good friend recently told me that she spent a night with a man, and in the morning proposed they get breakfast together. He pulled out his phone, accessed ChatGPT, and requested for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to 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 little effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s hard to see myself building a significant relationship with a person who consistently uses a tool that erodes focus and might lead to societal collapse. Inquisitiveness, originality, originality – I probably won’t find what I prize in someone who thinks “productivity” means prompting an app to summarize a movie plot so they don’t have to waste their time, you know, watching it.

Consider whether your dating criterion actually aligns with your life objectives.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she does use ChatGPT for particular purposes but doesn’t endorse it. In the past six months or so, she states “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 asked Jackson if my strike against ChatGPT users was too strict. She said no, proceed and judge, though it might limit my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now uses the tech.

“Ask yourself if your choice is really serving 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 values are in sync with yours.”

Additional People Expressing AI Apprehensions.

The aversion for AI applies beyond the dating sphere. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and works in sound for various live music venues across the city. She fantasizes about going into 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 rely on an app for that,” she said.

Two of Pereira’s friends lately had a messy breakup. She supported one of them after learning the other turned to ChatGPT, a notoriously poor therapy substitute, not their partner, when they wanted to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they didn’t want to sit through any difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process something and continue, which is not how things work.”

Before long, I could not manage 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 otherwise 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 Industry Backlash.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “rather die” than use AI tools, it made headlines. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade 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 issued statements that are skeptical of AI in their various industries. I believe these quotes go viral for a reason: people sympathize with them.

Even, to an extent, the people who power the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely deactivate, similar content on Instagram. Sources 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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