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The scene could have been pulled from a Nancy Meyers film. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that smelled of stealth wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is ideal,” 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 generative AI for the early stages of planning the wedding. (They also hired a professional wedding planner.) I responded courteously. Inside, though, I decided: if my future spouse came to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Contemporary Romantic Red Flags: AI Use.

Many individuals have usual relationship non-negotiables. Doesn’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. During the past few months, as warnings of an impending AI-induced apocalypse have flooded my social media and social conversations, I’ve come up with a fresh one. I will not date someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program really, 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”. Suppose I use it for my job, but I dislike it otherwise? Imagine if I use it to assist people? How about 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 Disgust to Political Position.

The phrase “getting the ick” describes that sensation of being unexpectedly turned off. Part of having an ick is not really understanding why you found someone’s behavior so unseemly. For example, I once felt 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 lacked any clear reasoning.

But here we are, in autumn 2025, and using the program even for harmless tasks such as figuring out a fitness routine or deciding 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; isolated, disconnected people finding companionship or even falling in love with code is not as much a sci-fi scenario as it is just the way things go now. The ultra-wealthy tech bros in charge of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

Sure, ChatGPT can generate your shopping list. But does that personal advantage offset the wider damage it creates?

How AI Ruins Romance and Intimacy.

It appears ChatGPT has managed to make the romantic scene even more challenging. 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, opened ChatGPT, and requested for restaurant suggestions. Why build a relationship with someone who outsources decisions, including the enjoyable ones like picking where to eat? If someone is so lazy they’ll consult ChatGPT to plan a first date, imagine how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot envision forming a profound, long-term connection with someone who regularly interacts with a technology that’s weakening our collective attention spans and possibly signaling total apocalypse. Intellectual curiosity, originality, uniqueness – I likely won’t find what I value in someone who thinks “productivity” means prompting an app to recap a movie plot so they don’t have to spend their time, you know, watching it.

Reflect on whether your relationship criterion genuinely aligns with your long-term aims.

Ali Jackson, a dating and relationship 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 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 strike against ChatGPT chumps was too strict. She said no, proceed and evaluate, though it might reduce my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now uses the tech.

“Ask yourself if your choice is really serving your long-term 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 Have the ChatGPT Aversion.

Other people experience the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and works in sound for various live music venues across the city. She dreams about accessing her phone settings and disabling AI features on all her apps, though tech platforms from Google to Spotify make it almost impossible to disable. Pereira believes that using ChatGPT “demonstrates such a laziness”.

“It’s like you can’t think for yourself, and you have to depend on an app for that,” she said.

A recent acquaintance’s split was particularly messy. She sided with one of them after learning the other turned to ChatGPT, a infamously awful 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 deal with something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Suddenly I was unable to do it by myself. I was too reliant on AI to do the simplest things [at work].

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and is a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is likewise weary. “I am not sure if I would think otherwise 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 likely not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Public Personalities and Tech Professionals Voicing Concerns.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “rather die” than use generative AI, it made headlines. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade against the tech cautioning 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 critical of AI in their various industries. I think these quotes go viral for a reason: people agree with them.

Even, to an degree, the people who power the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users turn off AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely deactivate, comparable slop on Instagram. Reports suggested that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley techies refuse to use AI to write their code.

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