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It felt like a scene straight from a Nancy Meyers movie. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that reeked of stealth wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is perfect,” I remarked to the groom-to-be. He moved closer as if revealing a secret: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

I smiled tightly as this person explained using artificial intelligence for the initial stages of planning the wedding. (They also hired a professional wedding planner.) I replied courteously. Internally, however, I resolved: if my future spouse came to me with wedding ideas from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The New Dating Non-Negotiable.

Some people have typical relationship non-negotiables. Won’t smoke, is a cat person, wants kids. During the past few months, as alarms of an approaching AI-induced doomsday have flooded my news feed and party conversations, I’ve developed a fresh one. I refuse to see someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program 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”. Suppose I use it for my job, but I hate 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 individuals out there for you. But I am not one of them.

From ‘Ick’ to Ethical Position.

“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 off-putting. For example, I once got the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a simple ick, a kneejerk feeling of disgust that lacked any clear reasoning.

But here we are, in fall 2025, and using the tool even for harmless tasks such as figuring out a fitness routine or choosing what to wear feels an more and more ethical choice. We are aware that the energy-intensive tech depletes our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is marketed as a placebo for real relationships; lonely, disconnected people finding companionship or even falling in love with code is not as much a science fiction 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 assists you write your grocery list. Does your individual ease justify the broader harm it can cause?

The Romantic Problem: When Your Date Uses ChatGPT.

It appears ChatGPT has found a way to make the dating scene even more challenging. A good friend 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 requested for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who delegates decisions, including the enjoyable ones like picking where to eat? If someone is so unmotivated they’ll consult ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot imagine forming a profound, long-term connection with someone who frequently engages with a technology that’s kneecapping our shared attention spans and possibly heralding total apocalypse. Inquisitiveness, originality, originality – 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 waste their time, you know, watching it.

Ask yourself if your [dating] preference is truly supporting your future goals.

Ali Jackson, a romantic coach located in New York, employs ChatGPT for some tasks – but she is not an evangelist. In the past six months or so, she states “every one” of her clients has come her complaining about “chatfishing” or people who use AI to create 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 harsh. She said no, go forth and evaluate, though it might reduce my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now utilizes the tech.

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

Others Who Share the AI Ick.

Other people get the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and works in sound for various 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 almost 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 rely on an app for that,” she said.

Two of Pereira’s friends recently had a messy breakup. She sided with one of them after learning the other went to ChatGPT, a infamously awful therapy alternative, not their partner, when they needed to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they refused to sit through any difficult 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 dependent on AI to do the simplest things [at work].

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, shares comparable sentiments. “I don’t know 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 likely not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Public Personalities and Silicon Valley Insiders Voicing Concerns.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “prefer death” than use AI tools, it made news. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade 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 skeptical of AI in their various industries. I believe these quotes go viral for a cause: people sympathize with them.

This sentiment exists even among those in the tech sector. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely remove, comparable content 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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