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It was a scene lifted from a Nancy Meyers film. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that reeked of stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is ideal,” I told the groom-to-be. He leaned in as if revealing a confidential detail: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

My smile was polite as he outlined how generative AI assisted in the wedding planning. (A real wedding planner was also hired.) I replied politely. Inside, though, I decided: if my prospective spouse approached to me with wedding input from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The New Relationship Non-Negotiable.

Some people have common relationship non-negotiables. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, wants kids. During the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced doomsday have dominated my social media 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 dominant and thus the object of my scorn.)

I’ve heard all the “what if’s”. Suppose I use it for my job, but I dislike 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 say: there are individuals out there for you. But I am not one of them.

How a Simple Turn-Off Becomes a Moral Stand.

The phrase “getting the ick” refers to that feeling of being unexpectedly turned off. A key aspect of having an ick is not fully understanding why you considered someone’s behavior so off-putting. For instance, I once got the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. At first, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a mere ick, a kneejerk feeling of disgust that lacked any clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for seemingly simple tasks like creating a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a deliberate political decision. We are aware that the energy-intensive tech drains our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is sold as a placebo for real relationships; lonely, disconnected people finding companionship or even developing feelings with code is not as much a sci-fi scenario as it is just the way things go now. The megarich tech executives in control of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

OK, so ChatGPT assists you write your grocery list. Does your individual ease justify the societal harm it can cause?

A Romantic Problem: If Your Partner Relies on ChatGPT.

As if it had not done enough already, ChatGPT has in some way made dating even worse. A good friend recently told me that she went out with a man, and in the morning proposed they get breakfast together. He pulled out his phone, opened ChatGPT, and requested for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who delegates 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, consider how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot imagine forming a profound, lasting connection with someone who regularly interacts with a technology that’s kneecapping our collective attention spans and perhaps signaling total apocalypse. Intellectual curiosity, creativity, uniqueness – I probably won’t find what I value 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.

Reflect on whether your relationship preference genuinely fits with your life aims.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she does use ChatGPT for particular tasks 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 create everything on their dating apps – all the way down to the DMs they send. I asked Jackson if my rule against ChatGPT chumps was too harsh. She said no, go forth and evaluate, 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 values are aligned with yours.”

More People Expressing ChatGPT Apprehensions.

Other people experience the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and does sound for various 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 almost impossible to disable. Pereira thinks 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.

A recent friend’s split was especially messy. She supported one of them after learning the other went to ChatGPT, a notoriously poor therapy alternative, not their partner, when they needed 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 deal with something and continue, 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, who is 31 and works as a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is likewise 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.”

Public Figures and Tech Professionals Speaking Out.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “rather die” than use AI tools, it made news. Similarly, 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 critical of AI in their various industries. I think these quotes spread widely for a cause: people sympathize with them.

This attitude is present even among those in 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. Reports suggested that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley professionals refuse to use AI to write their code.

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