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The setting could have been taken from a Nancy Meyers production. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that smelled of discreet wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is perfect,” I remarked to the future groom. He leaned in as if sharing a secret: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

My expression was courteous as he detailed how generative AI helped in the wedding planning. (A real wedding planner was also brought in.) I responded politely. Inside, though, I decided: if my prospective spouse approached to me with wedding ideas from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Contemporary Dating Dealbreakers: Artificial Intelligence Usage.

Some people have common relationship dealbreakers. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. During the past few months, as alarms of an approaching AI-induced doomsday have flooded my news feed and social conversations, I’ve developed a fresh one. I refuse to date someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool truly, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the target of my disdain.)

People often ask the “what if” questions. What if I use it for my job, but I dislike 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.

From Disgust to Ethical Stance.

The phrase “getting the ick” refers to that feeling of being unexpectedly turned off. A key aspect of having an ick is not fully understanding why you considered someone’s behavior so unseemly. For example, I once got the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a mere ick, a automatic feeling of revulsion that had no any clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even using ChatGPT for apparently simple tasks like designing a workout plan or selecting an outfit feels like a deliberate moral decision. We are aware that the power-hungry tech drains our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is sold as a substitute for human connection; isolated, detached people discovering companionship or even falling in love with code is not as much a sci-fi scenario as it is just the way things go now. The ultra-wealthy tech bros in charge of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

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

How AI Ruins Dating and Connection.

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 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 choosing where to eat? If someone is so unmotivated they’ll consult ChatGPT to plan a first date, imagine how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s hard to picture myself building a significant relationship with a person who often uses a tool that diminishes focus and might lead to societal collapse. Intellectual curiosity, creativity, uniqueness – I probably 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.

Ask yourself if your [dating] preference is truly supporting your long-term goals.

Ali Jackson, a romantic coach located in New York, uses ChatGPT for some tasks – but she is not an advocate. In the past six months or so, she says “every one” of her clients has come 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 asked Jackson if my rule against ChatGPT users was too harsh. 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 preference is truly serving your future goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would assume that’s one of your principles, and it’s essential to find someone whose beliefs are aligned with yours.”

Additional Individuals Voicing AI Apprehensions.

The dislike for AI applies beyond the dating sphere. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and does sound for various 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 almost impossible to disable. 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 supported 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 sit through any uncomfortable human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process something and continue, which is not how things work.”

Before long, I found not handle it on my own. I had become too reliant on AI for even routine 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 depend on it to make a grocery list. Your life is probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Public Figures and Silicon Valley Professionals Speaking Out.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “rather die” than use generative AI, it made headlines. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade against the tech cautioning 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 think these quotes spread widely for a cause: people sympathize with them.

This attitude is present even among those in 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 techies refuse to use AI to write their code.

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