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The scene could have been taken from a Nancy Meyers production. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that smelled of discreet wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is perfect,” I remarked to the groom-to-be. He moved closer as if revealing a secret: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

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

Modern Dating Dealbreakers: AI Usage.

Many individuals have usual relationship non-negotiables. Won’t smoke, is a cat person, desires kids. Over the past few months, as warnings of an approaching AI-induced doomsday have dominated my social media and social conversations, I’ve come up with a new one. I refuse to see someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program really, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the target of my disdain.)

People often pose the “what if” scenarios. Suppose I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? What if I use it to assist people? What if I only use it as a proofreading 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.

How a Simple ‘Ick’ Turns Into a Ethical Issue.

“Getting the ick” is what we occasionally call being turned off. A key aspect of having an ick is not fully 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. At first, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a mere ick, a automatic feeling of revulsion that had no any solid reasoning.

But here we are, in fall 2025, and using the tool even for benign tasks such as planning a fitness routine or choosing what to wear feels an more and more political choice. We know that the energy-intensive tech depletes our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is sold as a substitute for real relationships; isolated, detached people finding companionship or even developing feelings with code is not as much a science fiction scenario as it is just the way things go now. The megarich tech executives 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?

A Romantic Problem: When Your Date Uses ChatGPT.

It appears ChatGPT has found a way to make the dating scene even more challenging. A close acquaintance recently 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 requested for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who outsources decisions, including the enjoyable ones like picking 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 establishing a meaningful bond with a person who often uses a tool that erodes focus and might lead to societal collapse. Inquisitiveness, originality, uniqueness – I probably 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 spend their time, you know, watching it.

Ask yourself if your [dating] preference is really serving your long-term goals.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she may use ChatGPT for particular tasks but doesn’t promote 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 inquired Jackson if my rule 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 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 aligned with yours.”

Others Who Have the ChatGPT Aversion.

The dislike for AI applies beyond the dating sphere. Ana Pereira, 26, lives 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 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 depend on an app for that,” she said.

A recent friend’s breakup was especially messy. She sided with one of them after learning the other went to ChatGPT, a notoriously awful therapy alternative, not their partner, when they needed 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.”

Suddenly I was unable to do it by myself. I was too reliant on AI to do the simplest things [at work].

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and is a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is likewise weary. “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.”

Celebrity and Tech Backlash.

Guillermo del Toro’s statement that he’d “choose death” over using generative AI garnered significant coverage. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories rant against the tech cautioning 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 critical of AI in their respective industries. I believe these quotes go viral for a cause: people agree with them.

This attitude is present even among those in the tech sector. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely remove, comparable content on Instagram. Reports indicated that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley techies won’t use AI to write their code.

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