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

My expression was polite as he detailed how generative AI helped in the wedding preparations. (A real wedding planner was eventually brought in.) I responded courteously. Inside, however, I decided: if my prospective spouse approached to me with wedding input courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The Latest Dating Dealbreaker.

Many individuals have standard relationship non-negotiables. Doesn’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. Over the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced doomsday have dominated my news feed and social conversations, I’ve come up with a fresh one. I will not date someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool truly, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the object of my scorn.)

I’ve encountered all the “what if’s”. What if I use it for my job, but I dislike it otherwise? What if I use it to help 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.

When a Minor Turn-Off Becomes a Moral Stand.

The phrase “getting the ick” refers to that sensation of being suddenly disgusted. Part of having an ick is not fully understanding why you considered someone’s behavior so off-putting. For instance, I once got the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a mere ick, a kneejerk feeling of revulsion that lacked any solid reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for apparently innocent tasks like creating a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a conscious political decision. We are aware that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is marketed as a placebo for human connection; lonely, disconnected people finding 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 executives in control of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

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

A Romantic Problem: If Your Partner Relies on ChatGPT.

It seems ChatGPT has found a way to make the romantic 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, accessed ChatGPT, and asked for restaurant suggestions. Why build a relationship with someone who outsources decisions, including the fun 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 picture myself establishing a significant bond with a person who often uses a tool that diminishes focus and might bring about societal collapse. Intellectual curiosity, creativity, uniqueness – I probably won’t find what I prize in someone who thinks “productivity” means prompting an app to recap a movie plot so they don’t have to spend their time, you know, watching it.

Consider whether your relationship criterion genuinely fits with your life objectives.

Ali Jackson, a dating and relationship coach based in New York, employs ChatGPT for some tasks – but she is not an evangelist. In the past six months or so, she states “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 inquired Jackson if my strike against ChatGPT chumps was too harsh. She said no, go forth and evaluate, though it might limit my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now uses the tech.

“Ask yourself if your choice is truly serving your long-term goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would assume that’s one of your principles, and it’s important to find someone whose values are aligned with yours.”

Others Who Have the AI Ick.

The dislike for AI applies beyond the romantic realm. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and works in sound for multiple live music venues across the city. She dreams about going into her phone settings and deactivating AI features on all her apps, though tech platforms from Google to Spotify make it almost impossible to opt out. Pereira believes that using ChatGPT “demonstrates such a laziness”.

“It’s like you can’t think for yourself, and you have to rely on an app for that,” she said.

A recent friend’s breakup was particularly ugly. She sided with one of them after learning the other turned to ChatGPT, a notoriously poor therapy alternative, not their partner, when they wanted 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 move on, which is not how things work.”

Suddenly I couldn’t do it by myself. I was too dependent on AI to do the most basic things [at work].

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, shares similar views. “I don’t know 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 Industry Resistance.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “prefer death” than use generative AI, it made headlines. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories rant against the tech warning about “environmental racism” and expressing 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.

This sentiment is present even among those in the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely remove, similar content 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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