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The setting could have been taken from a Nancy Meyers film. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that smelled of stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is ideal,” I told the groom-to-be. He moved closer as if sharing a confidential detail: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

I smiled tightly as this person explained using generative AI for the initial stages of planning the wedding. (They also employed a professional wedding planner.) I responded courteously. Inside, though, I decided: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding ideas from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The New Relationship Non-Negotiable.

Some people have common relationship dealbreakers. Doesn’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. Over the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced apocalypse have flooded my social media and party conversations, I’ve developed a new one. I refuse to see someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool really, 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 dislike it otherwise? What if I use it to assist people? What if I only use it as a editing tool – I’d never use it to “write” anything. To all that I say: there are people out there for you. But I am not one of them.

From Disgust to Ethical Stance.

“Getting the ick” is what we occasionally call being turned off. A key aspect of having an ick is not really understanding why you found someone’s behavior so off-putting. For example, I once felt the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. At first, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a mere ick, a kneejerk feeling of revulsion that lacked any solid reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for seemingly innocent tasks like designing a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a deliberate moral act. We know that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is sold as a substitute for real relationships; lonely, 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 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 benefit offset the collective damage it creates?

A Romantic Problem: When Your Partner Uses ChatGPT.

It seems ChatGPT has managed to make the romantic scene even more challenging. A close acquaintance recently told me that she spent a night with a man, and in the morning suggested they get breakfast together. He took out his phone, accessed ChatGPT, and asked 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 unmotivated they’ll consult ChatGPT to plan a first date, imagine how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot envision forming a profound, lasting connection with someone who frequently interacts with a technology that’s weakening our collective attention spans and perhaps signaling total apocalypse. Inquisitiveness, originality, originality – I likely 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 waste their time, you know, watching it.

Reflect on whether your dating preference genuinely aligns with your long-term aims.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based relationship coach, she may use ChatGPT for particular purposes but is not promote 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 users was too strict. She said no, proceed and evaluate, though it might reduce my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now utilizes the tech.

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

Others Who Have the AI Ick.

Other people experience the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and does sound for multiple live music venues across the city. She fantasizes 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 thinks that using ChatGPT “shows such a lack of initiative”.

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

A recent acquaintance’s breakup was particularly messy. She sided with one of them after learning the other went to ChatGPT, a notoriously poor therapy substitute, not their partner, when they wanted to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they refused to sit through any uncomfortable human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process something and continue, which is not how things work.”

Eventually, I found not handle it on my own. I had become too dependent on AI for the routine work.

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and is a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is likewise weary. “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 likely not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Public Figures and Silicon Valley Professionals Voicing Concerns.

Guillermo del Toro’s declaration that he’d “choose death” over using AI garnered significant attention. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade against the tech cautioning 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 make statements that are critical of AI in their respective industries. I believe these quotes spread widely for a reason: people agree with them.

This sentiment is present even among those in the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely deactivate, comparable content on Instagram. Sources suggested that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley professionals won’t use AI to write their code.

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