It was a moment lifted from a Nancy Meyers movie. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that reeked of stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is ideal,” I told the groom-to-be. He moved closer as if revealing a secret: “I found it on ChatGPT.”
My expression was polite as he detailed how generative AI assisted in the wedding preparations. (A real wedding planner was also hired.) I replied courteously. Inside, however, I resolved: if my future spouse came to me with wedding input courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.
Some people have common relationship dealbreakers. Doesn’t smoke, prefers cat person, wants kids. During the past few months, as warnings of an impending AI-induced apocalypse have flooded my news feed and social conversations, I’ve developed 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 disdain.)
People always ask the “what if” scenarios. Suppose I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? What if I use it to help people? What if I only use it as a proofreading 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.
“Getting the ick” is what we sometimes call being repulsed. Part of having an ick is not really understanding why you considered someone’s behavior so unseemly. For example, I once felt the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a mere ick, a automatic feeling of revulsion that had no any solid reasoning.
Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for seemingly innocent tasks like creating a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a deliberate political act. We know that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is sold as a substitute for human connection; lonely, detached people finding companionship or even falling in love 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.
Sure, ChatGPT can generate your shopping list. But does that individual advantage excuse the wider negative impact it creates?
It appears ChatGPT has managed 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 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 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 meaningful bond with a person who consistently uses a tool that erodes concentration and might bring about societal collapse. Intellectual curiosity, originality, uniqueness – I likely won’t find what I value in someone who believes “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.
According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based relationship coach, she does use ChatGPT for specific purposes but doesn’t endorse it. In the past six months or so, she says “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 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 preference is really serving your long-term goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would assume that’s one of your principles, and it’s essential to find someone whose values are in sync with yours.”
The dislike for AI applies beyond the dating sphere. Ana Pereira, 26, lives 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 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 split was particularly ugly. She supported one of them after discovering the other went to ChatGPT, a infamously awful therapy alternative, not their partner, when they wanted to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they refused to sit through any uncomfortable human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to deal with something and continue, which is not how things work.”
Before long, I found not handle it on my own. I had grown too reliant on AI for the routine work.
Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, has comparable sentiments. “I am not sure if I would think differently about someone who uses ChatGPT, but I would be like, ‘come on,’” he said. “You shouldn’t have to rely on it to make a grocery list. Your life is probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”
When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “prefer death” than use AI tools, it made headlines. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade against the tech warning about “environmental racism” and showing fear over users who are “codependent on a machine”. The same goes for when Simu Liu, Alison Roman, Céline Dion, Emily Blunt, and others make statements that are critical of AI in their respective industries. I believe these quotes spread widely for a cause: people sympathize with them.
Even, to an extent, the people who power the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely deactivate, comparable 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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