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It felt like a moment straight from a Nancy Meyers movie. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that reeked of discreet wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is perfect,” I remarked to the groom-to-be. He leaned in as if sharing a secret: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

I smiled politely as this man described using generative AI for the early stages of organizing the wedding. (They also employed a professional wedding planner.) I responded politely. Inside, however, I decided: if my future spouse approached to me with wedding input from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The Latest Relationship Dealbreaker.

Many individuals have usual romantic dealbreakers. Doesn’t smoke, is a cat person, desires kids. During the past few months, as warnings of an approaching AI-induced doomsday have dominated my news feed and party conversations, I’ve come up with a fresh one. I will not see someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool really, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the target of my scorn.)

People often ask the “what if” questions. Suppose 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 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.

From ‘Ick’ to Political Position.

“Getting the ick” is what we sometimes call being turned off. A key aspect of having an ick is not really understanding why you found someone’s behavior so off-putting. For example, I once felt 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 lacked any clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even using ChatGPT for seemingly innocent tasks like creating a workout plan or selecting an outfit feels like a deliberate political act. We are aware that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is marketed as a substitute for human connection; lonely, detached people discovering 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 ultra-wealthy tech bros in control of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

Sure, ChatGPT can create your shopping list. But does that personal benefit offset the wider negative impact it creates?

A Romantic Disaster: When Your Date Uses ChatGPT.

It seems ChatGPT has managed to make the romantic scene even more challenging. A close acquaintance recently told me that she went out with a man, and in the morning proposed they get breakfast together. He took out his phone, opened ChatGPT, and asked for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who delegates decisions, including the enjoyable ones like picking where to eat? If someone is so lazy they’ll consult ChatGPT to plan a first date, imagine how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s hard to picture myself establishing a meaningful relationship with a person who consistently uses a tool that diminishes focus and might lead to societal collapse. Inquisitiveness, creativity, uniqueness – I likely won’t find what I value in someone who believes “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] choice is really supporting your long-term goals.

Ali Jackson, a dating and relationship coach based in New York, employs 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 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 asked Jackson if my rule against ChatGPT chumps was too strict. She said no, proceed and evaluate, though it might reduce my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now utilizes the tech.

“Ask yourself if your choice is really supporting 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.”

Others Who Have the ChatGPT Aversion.

Other people experience the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and works in sound for multiple live music venues across the city. She fantasizes about going into 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 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 complicated breakup. She sided with one of them after discovering the other turned to ChatGPT, a notoriously awful therapy substitute, not their partner, when they needed to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they didn’t want to endure any difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to deal with something and continue, which is not how things work.”

Before long, I could not handle it on my own. I had grown too reliant on AI for even basic tasks.

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, has comparable sentiments. “I am not sure 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.”

Celebrity and Tech Backlash.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “prefer death” than use AI tools, it made news. Ditto for, 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 make statements that are critical of AI in their respective industries. I think these quotes go viral for a reason: people sympathize with them.

This sentiment exists 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 deactivate, similar slop on Instagram. Sources indicated that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley professionals won’t use AI to write their code.

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