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The setting could have been pulled from a Nancy Meyers production. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that reeked of stealth 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.”

I smiled tightly as this man explained using artificial intelligence for the early stages of organizing the wedding. (They also hired a professional wedding planner.) I responded politely. Internally, though, I resolved: if my future spouse came to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The New Dating Dealbreaker.

Some people have typical relationship dealbreakers. Doesn’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. Over the past few months, as alarms of an approaching AI-induced apocalypse have flooded my social media and social conversations, I’ve developed a fresh one. I refuse to date someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program really, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the target of my disdain.)

People often ask the “what if” scenarios. What if 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 proofreading 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.

How a Minor Turn-Off Turns Into a Moral Issue.

The phrase “getting the ick” describes that feeling of being suddenly turned off. A key aspect 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. At first, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a simple ick, a kneejerk feeling of disgust that lacked any solid reasoning.

But here we are, in autumn 2025, and using the program even for benign tasks such as planning a fitness routine or choosing what to wear feels an more and more ethical choice. We are aware that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is sold 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 scenario as it is just the way things go now. The megarich tech bros in control of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

Sure, ChatGPT can create your shopping list. But does that individual advantage excuse the wider negative impact it creates?

How ChatGPT Ruins Dating and Connection.

As if it had not done enough already, ChatGPT has somehow made dating even worse. A close acquaintance recently told me that she went out 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 delegates decisions, including the fun ones like picking where to eat? If someone is so lazy they’ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s hard to see myself building a significant bond with a person who often uses a tool that diminishes focus and might bring about societal collapse. Inquisitiveness, creativity, 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.

Consider whether your dating preference genuinely aligns with your life objectives.

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

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

Others Who Have the ChatGPT Ick.

Other people experience the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and works in sound for multiple 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 nearly impossible to opt out. Pereira thinks that using ChatGPT “demonstrates such a lack of initiative”.

“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 breakup was especially ugly. She supported one of them after discovering the other turned to ChatGPT, a infamously awful therapy substitute, not their partner, when they wanted 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 process something and continue, which is not how things work.”

Suddenly I couldn’t do it by myself. I was too reliant on AI to do the most basic things [at work].

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and works as a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is similarly skeptical. “I am not sure if I would think differently 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 probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Well-Known Figures and Tech Insiders Speaking Out.

Guillermo del Toro’s statement that he’d “rather die” over using generative AI garnered significant attention. 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 respective industries. I believe these quotes spread widely for a reason: people agree with them.

Even, to an degree, the people who run the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely deactivate, similar slop on Instagram. Reports 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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