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It felt like a moment straight from a Nancy Meyers movie. We were 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 remarked to the groom-to-be. He moved closer as if sharing a secret: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

My smile was courteous as he detailed how AI tools assisted in the wedding planning. (A real wedding planner was eventually hired.) I replied politely. Inside, though, I decided: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding ideas from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Modern Romantic Red Flags: Artificial Intelligence Usage.

Many individuals have standard romantic non-negotiables. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. Over the past few months, as warnings of an impending AI-induced doomsday have dominated my social media and social conversations, I’ve come up with a fresh one. I will not date 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.)

People often pose the “what if” scenarios. Suppose I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? What if I use it to help people? How about I only use it as a editing tool – I’d never use it to “write” anything. To all that I say: there are people out there for you. But I am not one of them.

From Disgust to Political Position.

The term “getting the ick” describes that feeling of being unexpectedly turned off. Part 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. Initially, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a simple ick, a automatic 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 political choice. We are aware that the energy-intensive tech drains our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is sold as a placebo for human connection; isolated, 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 ultra-wealthy tech executives in charge of all this think 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 Disaster: When Your Partner Uses ChatGPT.

As if it had not done enough already, ChatGPT has in some way made dating even worse. A close acquaintance recently told me that she spent a night with a man, and in the morning suggested they get breakfast together. He took out his phone, accessed ChatGPT, and requested for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who outsources decisions, including the fun ones like choosing where to eat? If someone is so lazy they’ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, imagine how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot envision forming a deep, lasting connection with someone who regularly interacts with a technology that’s weakening our collective attention spans and possibly heralding total apocalypse. Inquisitiveness, creativity, 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 waste their time, you know, watching it.

Consider whether your relationship criterion actually fits with your life aims.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she may use ChatGPT for particular purposes but is not endorse it. In the past six months or so, she states “every one” of her clients has approached her expressing concern 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 strike against ChatGPT chumps was too strict. She said no, proceed and judge, though it might limit my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now utilizes the tech.

“Ask yourself if your choice is truly serving your long-term 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 aligned with yours.”

Others Who Have the AI Aversion.

The dislike for AI applies beyond the dating sphere. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and does sound for various live music venues across the city. She fantasizes about accessing her phone settings and deactivating AI features on all her apps, though tech platforms from Google to Spotify make it nearly impossible to disable. Pereira believes that using ChatGPT “shows such a laziness”.

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

Two of Pereira’s friends recently had a messy breakup. She supported one of them after learning the other went to ChatGPT, a notoriously awful therapy substitute, not their partner, when they wanted to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they refused to sit through any uncomfortable human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to deal with something and continue, which is not how things work.”

Suddenly I couldn’t do it by myself. I was too dependent 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 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 depend on it to make a grocery list. Your life is likely not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Celebrity and Tech Backlash.

Guillermo del Toro’s statement that he’d “choose death” over using AI garnered significant attention. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade against the tech warning about “environmental racism” and showing fear over users who are “codependent on a machine”. The same goes for when Simu Liu, Alison Roman, Céline Dion, Emily Blunt, and others issued statements that are skeptical of AI in their various industries. I think these quotes spread widely for a cause: people agree with them.

Even, to an extent, the people who power the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely deactivate, similar content on Instagram. Sources indicated that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley techies won’t use AI to write their code.

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