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The setting could have been taken from a Nancy Meyers production. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that smelled of stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is ideal,” I told 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 generative AI for the early stages of organizing the wedding. (They also hired a professional wedding planner.) I responded politely. Inside, though, I resolved: if my prospective spouse approached to me with wedding input courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The Latest Dating Non-Negotiable.

Many individuals have usual romantic non-negotiables. Doesn’t smoke, is a cat person, desires kids. During the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced apocalypse have flooded my social media and party conversations, I’ve come up with a new one. I refuse to see someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool truly, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the target of my scorn.)

I’ve encountered all the “what if’s”. What if I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? Imagine 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 individuals out there for you. But I am not one of them.

How a Simple ‘Ick’ Becomes a Moral Issue.

The term “getting the ick” describes 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 unseemly. For instance, I once got the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a mere ick, a automatic 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 planning a fitness routine or deciding what to wear feels an increasingly political choice. We are aware that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is marketed as a substitute for human connection; lonely, detached people discovering companionship or even falling in love with code is not as much a science fiction plot point 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 helps you write your grocery list. Does your personal convenience outweigh the societal harm it can cause?

How ChatGPT Ruins Dating and Intimacy.

It seems ChatGPT has found a way 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, opened ChatGPT, and asked for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who outsources 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 minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot envision forming a deep, 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, originality – I likely 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.

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

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based relationship coach, she does use ChatGPT for particular tasks but is not endorse it. In the past six months or so, she states “every one” of her clients has approached her complaining about “chatfishing” or people who use AI to create everything on their dating apps – all the way down to the DMs they send. I inquired Jackson if my rule against ChatGPT users was too harsh. She said no, go forth 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 truly supporting your future goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would assume that’s one of your principles, and it’s important to find someone whose beliefs are aligned with yours.”

Additional People Expressing AI Apprehensions.

Other people experience the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and works in sound for various 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 opt out. 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 breakup was particularly ugly. She sided with one of them after discovering the other turned to ChatGPT, a notoriously poor therapy alternative, not their partner, when they wanted to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they didn’t want to endure any difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to deal with something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Suddenly I couldn’t 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 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 don’t need 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 Speaking Out.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “rather die” than use AI tools, it made headlines. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade 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 skeptical of AI in their various industries. I believe these quotes go viral for a reason: people sympathize with them.

Even, to an degree, the people who power the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely deactivate, comparable 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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