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The setting could have been taken from a Nancy Meyers film. 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 ideal,” I remarked to the future groom. He moved closer as if sharing a confidential detail: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

I grinned politely as this man explained using artificial intelligence for the early stages of planning the wedding. (They also hired a professional wedding planner.) I replied courteously. Internally, however, I decided: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding input from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The Latest Dating Non-Negotiable.

Some people have common relationship non-negotiables. Doesn’t smoke, prefers cat person, wants kids. Over the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced apocalypse have dominated my news feed and party conversations, I’ve come up with a new one. I will not see someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program truly, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the object of my scorn.)

People often ask the “what if” scenarios. Suppose I use it for my job, but I dislike it otherwise? Imagine if I use it to help people? How about I only use it as a proofreading tool – I’d never use it to “write” anything. To all that I say: there are individuals out there for you. But I am not one of them.

From Disgust to Ethical 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 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 automatic feeling of disgust that lacked any solid reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even using ChatGPT for apparently innocent tasks like creating a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a deliberate political decision. We know that the energy-intensive tech depletes our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is sold as a substitute for real relationships; isolated, disconnected people finding companionship or even developing feelings with code is not as much a sci-fi scenario as it is just the way things go now. The megarich tech executives in control of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

Sure, ChatGPT can create your shopping list. But does that individual advantage excuse the wider damage it causes?

How ChatGPT Spoils Dating and Intimacy.

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 delegates decisions, including the fun ones like choosing where to eat? If someone is so lazy they’ll consult ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot envision forming a deep, long-term connection with someone who frequently engages with a technology that’s kneecapping our shared attention spans and perhaps signaling total apocalypse. Intellectual curiosity, originality, uniqueness – I likely won’t find what I prize in someone who thinks “productivity” means prompting an app to summarize a movie plot so they don’t have to waste their time, you know, watching it.

Consider whether your dating criterion actually aligns with your life aims.

Ali Jackson, a dating and relationship coach based in New York, employs ChatGPT for certain 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 create everything on their dating apps – all the way down to the DMs they send. I inquired Jackson if my rule 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 utilizes the tech.

“Ask yourself if your choice is really serving your long-term 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 in sync with yours.”

Additional Individuals Voicing ChatGPT Concerns.

The aversion 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 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 lack of initiative”.

“It’s like you are unable to think for yourself, and you have to rely on an app for that,” she said.

Two of Pereira’s friends lately had a complicated breakup. She supported one of them after discovering the other turned to ChatGPT, a infamously poor therapy substitute, 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.”

Before long, I found not manage it on my own. I had grown too dependent on AI for the basic work.

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and works as a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is similarly weary. “I don’t know 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 “rather die” than use AI tools, it made news. 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 spread widely for a cause: people sympathize with them.

This attitude exists even among those in the tech sector. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users turn off AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely deactivate, similar content on Instagram. Reports suggested that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley techies won’t use AI to write their code.

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