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The setting could have been pulled from a Nancy Meyers film. We were 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 told the groom-to-be. He moved closer as if revealing a confidential detail: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

I grinned tightly as this person explained using artificial intelligence for the initial stages of planning the wedding. (They also hired a human wedding planner.) I responded courteously. Inside, though, I resolved: if my prospective spouse approached to me with wedding ideas from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The New Dating Non-Negotiable.

Some people have common relationship non-negotiables. Doesn’t smoke, is a cat person, desires kids. During the past few months, as alarms 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 employs ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool really, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the target of my scorn.)

People always pose the “what if” questions. 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 individuals out there for you. But I am not one of them.

From ‘Ick’ to Political Position.

The term “getting the ick” describes that sensation of being unexpectedly turned off. Part of having an ick is not fully understanding why you considered someone’s behavior so unseemly. For instance, I once got the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a mere ick, a kneejerk feeling of disgust that lacked any clear reasoning.

But here we are, in autumn 2025, and using the program even for harmless tasks such as planning a fitness routine or choosing what to wear feels an more and more political choice. We know that the energy-intensive tech depletes our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is sold as a placebo for human connection; lonely, disconnected 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.

Sure, ChatGPT can create your shopping list. But does that personal advantage offset the collective damage it causes?

How ChatGPT Ruins Romance and Connection.

It seems ChatGPT has managed to make the dating scene even more difficult. A close acquaintance lately 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 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 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 profound, lasting connection with someone who frequently engages with a technology that’s kneecapping our shared attention spans and possibly signaling total apocalypse. Intellectual curiosity, creativity, originality – I likely won’t find what I prize in someone who thinks “productivity” means asking an app to recap a movie plot so they don’t have to waste their time, you know, watching it.

Consider whether your relationship preference genuinely fits with your long-term objectives.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based relationship coach, she may use ChatGPT for specific purposes but doesn’t endorse it. In the past six months or so, she states “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 asked Jackson if my rule against ChatGPT users 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 truly serving 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.”

Others Who Have the AI Aversion.

The aversion for AI extends beyond the dating sphere. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and works in sound for multiple 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 disable. Pereira believes that using ChatGPT “shows such a laziness”.

“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 messy. She sided with one of them after learning the other went 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 endure any difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to deal with something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Before long, I found not handle it on my own. I had grown too dependent on AI for even routine tasks.

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, shares similar views. “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 depend on it to make a grocery list. Your life is likely not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Public Figures and Tech Insiders Speaking Out.

Guillermo del Toro’s statement that he’d “rather die” over using generative AI received significant coverage. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories rant against the tech cautioning 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 critical of AI in their respective industries. I believe these quotes go viral for a reason: people agree with them.

This attitude exists even among those in the tech sector. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely remove, comparable slop on Instagram. Sources 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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