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It was a scene straight from a Nancy Meyers film. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that reeked of discreet wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is perfect,” I remarked to the groom-to-be. He moved closer as if revealing a confidential detail: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

I smiled politely as this person explained using artificial intelligence for the initial stages of planning the wedding. (They also hired a professional wedding planner.) I responded politely. Inside, however, I resolved: if my future spouse came to me with wedding input courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Contemporary Romantic Red Flags: Artificial Intelligence Use.

Some people have typical relationship non-negotiables. Won’t smoke, is a cat person, desires kids. During the past few months, as warnings of an approaching AI-induced apocalypse have dominated my social media and social conversations, I’ve come up with a new one. I refuse to see someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program truly, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant 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? Imagine if I use it to help people? What if I only use it as a proofreading tool – I’d never use it to “write” anything. To all that I respond: there are people out there for you. But I am not one of them.

From Disgust to Ethical Position.

“Getting the ick” is what we occasionally call being repulsed. Part of having an ick is not really 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 aversion felt like a mere ick, a kneejerk feeling of disgust that had no any solid reasoning.

But here we are, in autumn 2025, and using the program even for harmless tasks such as figuring out a fitness routine or choosing what to wear feels an more and more political choice. We are aware that the power-hungry tech drains our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is marketed as a placebo for human connection; isolated, disconnected people discovering companionship or even developing feelings with code is not as much a science fiction scenario as it is just the way things go now. The ultra-wealthy tech bros in charge 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 damage it causes?

How AI Spoils Dating and Connection.

It seems ChatGPT has found a way to make the romantic scene even more challenging. A close acquaintance lately told me that she went out with a man, and in the morning proposed they get breakfast together. He took out his phone, opened ChatGPT, and requested for restaurant suggestions. Why build a relationship with someone who outsources decisions, including the fun ones like choosing where to eat? If someone is so unmotivated they’ll consult ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s hard to see myself establishing a significant bond with a person who often uses a tool that diminishes concentration and might lead to societal collapse. Inquisitiveness, creativity, originality – I likely won’t find what I prize in someone who thinks “productivity” means asking an app to summarize a movie plot so they don’t have to waste their time, you know, watching it.

Reflect on whether your relationship criterion genuinely aligns with your long-term objectives.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she does use ChatGPT for specific tasks but is not 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 generate 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, proceed and judge, though it might reduce my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now uses the tech.

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

Others Who Have the ChatGPT Aversion.

Other people get the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and does sound for multiple 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 almost impossible to opt out. Pereira thinks 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 recently had a messy breakup. She sided with one of them after discovering the other turned 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 difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to deal with something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Before long, I could not manage it on my own. I had grown too dependent on AI for the routine tasks.

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 shouldn’t have to depend 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 garnered significant coverage. 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 respective industries. I believe these quotes go viral for a cause: people sympathize with them.

Even, to an extent, the people who power the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely remove, comparable slop 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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