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The scene could have been taken from a Nancy Meyers film. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that smelled of discreet wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is ideal,” I remarked to the groom-to-be. He leaned in as if revealing a secret: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

I grinned tightly as this person described using generative AI for the early stages of planning the wedding. (They also employed a human wedding planner.) I replied courteously. Inside, however, I decided: if my prospective spouse approached to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The New Dating Non-Negotiable.

Some people have typical relationship dealbreakers. Doesn’t smoke, prefers cat person, wants kids. Over the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced apocalypse have flooded my news feed and party conversations, I’ve developed a fresh one. I refuse to see someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool 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”. What if I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? Imagine if I use it to help people? How about 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.

How a Simple Turn-Off Becomes a Ethical Stand.

“Getting the ick” is what we occasionally call being repulsed. Part of having an ick is not fully understanding why you considered someone’s behavior so unseemly. 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 revulsion that had no any solid reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even using ChatGPT for apparently simple tasks like creating a workout plan or selecting an outfit feels like a conscious moral decision. We are aware that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is marketed as a substitute for human connection; isolated, disconnected people finding companionship or even developing feelings with code is not as much a science fiction plot point as it is just the way things go now. The megarich tech bros in control of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

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

The Romantic Problem: If Your Date Relies on ChatGPT.

It appears ChatGPT has found a way to make the dating scene even more difficult. A good friend recently told me that she went out with a man, and in the morning suggested they get breakfast together. He pulled 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 unmotivated 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 frequently interacts with a technology that’s kneecapping our collective attention spans and perhaps signaling total apocalypse. Inquisitiveness, originality, uniqueness – I probably 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 spend their time, you know, watching it.

Consider whether your relationship preference actually aligns with your life objectives.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she does use ChatGPT for specific purposes but doesn’t promote it. 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 harsh. She said no, proceed 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 presume that’s one of your principles, and it’s essential to find someone whose beliefs are in sync with yours.”

Additional People Expressing ChatGPT Concerns.

Other people experience the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. 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 “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.

Two of Pereira’s friends lately had a messy breakup. She supported one of them after learning the other turned to ChatGPT, a notoriously poor therapy substitute, not their partner, when they wanted 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 was unable to do it by myself. I was too reliant on AI to do the simplest things [at work].

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, has similar views. “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.

Guillermo del Toro’s declaration that he’d “rather die” over using generative AI received significant coverage. 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”. The same goes 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 sympathize with them.

This sentiment is present even among those in the tech sector. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely deactivate, comparable slop on Instagram. Reports indicated that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley techies refuse to use AI to write their code.

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