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The scene could have been taken from a Nancy Meyers production. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that reeked of discreet wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is ideal,” I remarked to the groom-to-be. He moved closer as if sharing a confidential detail: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

I smiled politely as this person described using generative AI for the initial stages of planning the wedding. (They also employed a professional wedding planner.) I replied courteously. Internally, however, I resolved: if my prospective spouse approached to me with wedding input from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Contemporary Romantic Red Flags: AI Use.

Some people have common relationship dealbreakers. Doesn’t smoke, prefers cat person, wants kids. During the past few months, as warnings of an approaching AI-induced doomsday have flooded my social media and party conversations, I’ve developed a fresh one. I refuse to see someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program truly, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the object of my scorn.)

People always pose the “what if” questions. Suppose I use it for my job, but I dislike it otherwise? What 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 say: there are people out there for you. But I am not one of them.

From ‘Ick’ to Political Position.

“Getting the ick” is what we occasionally call being turned off. Part of having an ick is not really understanding why you found someone’s behavior so unseemly. For instance, I once got the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a simple ick, a automatic feeling of disgust that had no any clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for apparently innocent tasks like designing a workout plan or selecting an outfit feels like a conscious moral decision. We know that the power-hungry tech drains our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is marketed as a substitute for real relationships; lonely, disconnected people finding 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 ultra-wealthy tech bros in control of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

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

The Romantic Disaster: When Your Date Uses ChatGPT.

It appears ChatGPT has found a way to make the dating scene even more difficult. A close acquaintance lately told me that she went out with a man, and in the morning proposed they get breakfast together. He pulled out his phone, opened ChatGPT, and asked for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who delegates decisions, including the fun ones like choosing where to eat? If someone is so unmotivated they’ll consult ChatGPT to plan a first date, imagine how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s hard to see myself establishing a significant bond with a person who consistently uses a tool that diminishes concentration and might bring about societal collapse. Intellectual curiosity, creativity, uniqueness – I likely won’t find what I value in someone who thinks “productivity” means prompting an app to summarize a movie plot so they don’t have to spend their time, you know, watching it.

Consider whether your relationship preference actually fits with your life aims.

Ali Jackson, a dating and relationship coach located in New York, employs ChatGPT for certain tasks – but she is not an advocate. 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 rule against ChatGPT chumps was too harsh. She said no, go forth 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 truly supporting your long-term goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would presume that’s one of your values, and it’s important to find someone whose values are aligned with yours.”

Additional Individuals Expressing AI Apprehensions.

Other people get the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and works in sound for various 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 “demonstrates such a laziness”.

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

Two of Pereira’s friends recently had a messy breakup. She sided with one of them after learning the other went to ChatGPT, a notoriously poor therapy alternative, not their partner, when they needed to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they refused to sit through any uncomfortable human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to deal with something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Eventually, I could not handle it on my own. I had grown too reliant on AI for even routine tasks.

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, has 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 depend on it to make a grocery list. Your life is likely not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Well-Known Personalities and Silicon Valley Professionals Speaking Out.

Guillermo del Toro’s declaration that he’d “rather die” over using AI received significant coverage. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories rant against the tech cautioning 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 think these quotes go viral for a reason: people agree with them.

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