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It was a scene straight from a Nancy Meyers film. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that smelled of discreet wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is ideal,” I remarked to the future groom. He leaned in as if revealing a secret: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

My smile was polite as he outlined how AI tools helped in the wedding planning. (A real wedding planner was also brought in.) I responded courteously. Internally, though, I resolved: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The New Relationship Non-Negotiable.

Some people have common relationship dealbreakers. Doesn’t smoke, is a cat person, wants kids. During the past few months, as warnings of an approaching AI-induced apocalypse have flooded my social media and social conversations, I’ve developed a new one. I refuse to date someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program truly, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the object of my disdain.)

People often pose the “what if” questions. 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 individuals out there for you. But I am not one of them.

When a Simple Turn-Off Turns Into a Ethical Issue.

The phrase “getting the ick” describes that sensation of being suddenly turned off. Part of having an ick is not fully understanding why you considered someone’s behavior so off-putting. For instance, I once felt the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a simple ick, a kneejerk feeling of revulsion that had no any solid reasoning.

But here we are, in autumn 2025, and using the tool even for benign tasks such as planning a fitness routine or deciding what to wear feels an more and more political choice. We know that the power-hungry tech drains our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is marketed as a substitute for human connection; isolated, disconnected people discovering 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 ultra-wealthy tech executives in charge of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

Sure, ChatGPT can generate your shopping list. But does that individual benefit offset the wider negative impact it causes?

A Dating Disaster: When Your Partner Relies on ChatGPT.

It seems ChatGPT has found a way to make the dating scene even more difficult. 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, accessed ChatGPT, and asked for restaurant suggestions. Why build a relationship with someone who delegates decisions, including the enjoyable ones like choosing where to eat? If someone is so unmotivated they’ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, imagine how little 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 diminishes focus and might lead to societal collapse. Inquisitiveness, creativity, originality – I probably won’t find what I prize in someone who believes “productivity” means prompting an app to recap a movie plot so they don’t have to spend their time, you know, watching it.

Ask yourself if your [dating] choice is really supporting your long-term goals.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based relationship coach, she may use ChatGPT for specific purposes 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 strike against ChatGPT users was too harsh. She said no, go forth and evaluate, though it might reduce my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now utilizes the tech.

“Ask yourself if your choice is truly serving your future 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 Share the ChatGPT Aversion.

The dislike for AI extends beyond the dating realm. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and works in sound for multiple live music venues across the city. She dreams 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 thinks that using ChatGPT “demonstrates such a lack of initiative”.

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

A recent acquaintance’s breakup was especially ugly. She supported one of them after discovering the other went to ChatGPT, a infamously awful therapy alternative, not their partner, when they wanted to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they refused to endure any uncomfortable human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process something and move on, 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 similarly weary. “I don’t know if I would think differently about someone who uses ChatGPT, but I would be like, ‘come on,’” he said. “You don’t need to rely on it to make a grocery list. Your life is likely not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Celebrity and Industry Backlash.

Guillermo del Toro’s declaration that he’d “choose death” over using AI received significant coverage. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories rant against the tech warning about “environmental racism” and showing 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 critical of AI in their various industries. I think these quotes spread widely for a reason: people sympathize with them.

Even, to an degree, the people who run the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users turn off AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely deactivate, similar content 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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