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It was a moment straight from a Nancy Meyers movie. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that smelled of stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is perfect,” I told the future groom. He leaned in as if revealing a secret: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

My smile was courteous as he outlined how AI tools assisted in the wedding preparations. (A human wedding planner was also brought in.) I replied politely. Inside, though, I resolved: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding input courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Modern Romantic Red Flags: Artificial Intelligence Usage.

Some people have common relationship non-negotiables. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. Over the past few months, as warnings of an approaching AI-induced apocalypse have dominated my news feed and social conversations, I’ve developed a fresh one. I refuse to date someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool truly, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the object of my disdain.)

People often ask the “what if” scenarios. Suppose 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 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.

How a Simple ‘Ick’ Turns Into a Ethical Stand.

“Getting the ick” is what we sometimes call being turned off. A key aspect of having an ick is not really 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 automatic feeling of revulsion that had no any solid reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for seemingly simple tasks like designing a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a deliberate moral decision. We know that the power-hungry tech drains our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is marketed as a placebo for real relationships; isolated, detached people finding companionship or even developing feelings with code is not as much a sci-fi plot point 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 create your shopping list. But does that individual advantage excuse the collective damage it creates?

How ChatGPT Spoils Dating and Intimacy.

It appears ChatGPT has managed 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, accessed 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 minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s difficult to picture myself building a meaningful relationship with a person who consistently uses a tool that erodes concentration and might bring about societal collapse. 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 genuinely fits with your long-term aims.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she does use ChatGPT for specific purposes but is not promote it. In the past six months or so, she says “every one” of her clients has approached 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 strike against ChatGPT chumps was too harsh. 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 really supporting your future goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would assume that’s one of your values, and it’s essential to find someone whose values 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 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 disable. Pereira believes 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.

Two of Pereira’s friends lately had a messy breakup. She supported one of them after discovering the other went to ChatGPT, a notoriously awful therapy substitute, not their partner, when they needed to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they didn’t want to endure 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 simplest things [at work].

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, has comparable views. “I don’t know if I would think otherwise about someone who uses ChatGPT, but I would be like, ‘come on,’” he said. “You shouldn’t have to depend on it to make a grocery list. Your life is likely not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Public Personalities and Silicon Valley Professionals Voicing Concerns.

Guillermo del Toro’s declaration that he’d “rather die” over using generative AI received significant coverage. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories rant 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 various industries. I think these quotes go viral for a cause: 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, similar content on Instagram. Sources 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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