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It was a scene lifted from a Nancy Meyers film. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that smelled of discreet wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is perfect,” I told the groom-to-be. He leaned in as if revealing a confidential detail: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

I grinned tightly as this person explained using generative AI for the early stages of organizing the wedding. (They also hired a professional wedding planner.) I responded politely. Inside, though, I resolved: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding input from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The Latest Dating Dealbreaker.

Some people have common relationship dealbreakers. Doesn’t smoke, prefers cat person, wants kids. During the past few months, as warnings of an approaching AI-induced apocalypse have dominated my news feed and social 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 countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the target of my scorn.)

I’ve encountered all the “what if’s”. What if I use it for my job, but I dislike it otherwise? Imagine if I use it to assist 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 ‘Ick’ to Political Stance.

“Getting the ick” is what we occasionally call being repulsed. A key aspect of having an ick is not fully understanding why you found someone’s behavior so off-putting. 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 kneejerk feeling of revulsion that had no any clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for seemingly innocent tasks like designing a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a conscious moral act. We are aware that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is marketed as a placebo for real relationships; lonely, detached people discovering 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 charge of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

OK, so ChatGPT assists you write your grocery list. Does your personal ease outweigh the societal harm it can cause?

A Romantic Disaster: When Your Date Uses ChatGPT.

It appears ChatGPT has found a way to make the romantic scene even more difficult. A good friend recently told me that she spent a night with a man, and in the morning suggested they get breakfast together. He pulled out his phone, opened ChatGPT, and asked for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who outsources decisions, including the fun ones like picking where to eat? If someone is so unmotivated they’ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s hard to picture myself building a significant bond with a person who consistently uses a tool that diminishes concentration and might lead to societal collapse. Intellectual curiosity, creativity, originality – I likely won’t find what I value in someone who believes “productivity” means asking 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 romantic coach located 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 complaining 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 users was too harsh. She said no, go forth and judge, though it might reduce my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now utilizes the tech.

“Ask yourself if your preference is truly supporting your future goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would assume that’s one of your values, and it’s important to find someone whose values are aligned with yours.”

Additional Individuals Expressing ChatGPT Apprehensions.

The dislike for AI extends beyond the romantic sphere. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and works in sound for multiple 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 “shows such a lack of initiative”.

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

A recent friend’s split was particularly ugly. She sided with one of them after learning 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 endure any uncomfortable human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Suddenly I couldn’t do it by myself. I was too reliant on AI to do the most basic things [at work].

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and is a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is similarly weary. “I don’t know if I would think differently about someone who uses ChatGPT, but I would be like, ‘come on,’” he said. “You don’t need to rely on it to make a grocery list. Your life is probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Celebrity and Industry Resistance.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “rather die” than use generative AI, 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”. The same goes for when Simu Liu, Alison Roman, Céline Dion, Emily Blunt, and others make 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 is present even among those in the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users turn off AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely remove, comparable content on Instagram. Sources 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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