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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 reeked of discreet wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is ideal,” I remarked to the future groom. He moved closer as if sharing a confidential detail: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

My smile was courteous as he outlined how generative AI helped in the wedding planning. (A human wedding planner was eventually hired.) I responded politely. Internally, however, I resolved: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding input from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Modern Romantic Red Flags: Artificial Intelligence Usage.

Some people have common relationship non-negotiables. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. During 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 fresh one. I refuse to date someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool really, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the object of my scorn.)

I’ve heard 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 respond: there are people out there for you. But I am not one of them.

From Disgust to Ethical Position.

The phrase “getting the ick” describes that sensation of being suddenly disgusted. A key aspect of having an ick is not really 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 aversion felt like a mere ick, a kneejerk feeling of disgust that had no any solid reasoning.

But here we are, in autumn 2025, and using the tool even for benign tasks such as figuring out a fitness routine or deciding what to wear feels an more and more ethical choice. We know that the energy-intensive tech depletes our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is marketed as a placebo for real relationships; isolated, disconnected people discovering companionship or even falling in love with code is not as much a sci-fi plot point 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 helps you write your grocery list. Does your individual convenience outweigh the societal harm it can cause?

The Dating Problem: If Your Date Relies on ChatGPT.

As if it hadn’t done enough already, ChatGPT has somehow made dating even worse. A close acquaintance lately 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 outsources decisions, including the enjoyable ones like choosing where to eat? If someone is so unmotivated they’ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s difficult to picture myself establishing a significant bond with a person who often uses a tool that erodes concentration and might bring about societal collapse. Inquisitiveness, originality, originality – I probably won’t find what I prize in someone who thinks “productivity” means asking an app to summarize a movie plot so they don’t have to waste their time, you know, watching it.

Ask yourself if your [dating] choice is really supporting your future goals.

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 states “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 inquired Jackson if my strike against ChatGPT users 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 preference is truly supporting your future 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.”

Others Who Have the AI Aversion.

The dislike for AI extends beyond the romantic sphere. Ana Pereira, 26, resides 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 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 discovering 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 didn’t want to endure any difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process something and continue, which is not how things work.”

Eventually, I found not handle it on my own. I had become too reliant on AI for the routine tasks.

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, shares similar views. “I am not sure if I would think otherwise about someone who uses ChatGPT, but I would be like, ‘come on,’” he said. “You shouldn’t have to depend on it to make a grocery list. Your life is probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Celebrity and Industry Resistance.

Guillermo del Toro’s statement that he’d “rather die” over using AI received significant attention. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories rant against the tech warning 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 make statements that are skeptical of AI in their respective industries. I believe these quotes spread widely for a cause: people agree with them.

This sentiment is present even among those in the tech sector. 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 professionals refuse to use AI to write their code.

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