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The setting could have been taken from a Nancy Meyers film. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that reeked of stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location 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 courteous as he detailed how AI tools helped in the wedding planning. (A human wedding planner was also brought in.) I responded courteously. Inside, however, I resolved: if my future spouse came to me with wedding input from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The New Relationship Non-Negotiable.

Many individuals have usual romantic non-negotiables. Doesn’t smoke, is a cat person, desires kids. Over the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced doomsday have flooded my social media and party conversations, I’ve come up with a new one. I will not date someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program really, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the object of my disdain.)

I’ve encountered all the “what if’s”. 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 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.

From ‘Ick’ to Political Stance.

The term “getting the ick” refers to that feeling of being unexpectedly disgusted. A key aspect of having an ick is not fully understanding why you found someone’s behavior so off-putting. For example, 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 clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for seemingly innocent tasks like creating a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a conscious moral act. We are aware that the energy-intensive tech depletes our water supply and hikes 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 plot point as it is just the way things go now. The megarich tech executives in control of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

OK, so ChatGPT assists you write your grocery list. Does your personal convenience justify the broader harm it can cause?

A Romantic Problem: When Your Date Relies on ChatGPT.

It appears ChatGPT has found a way to make the romantic scene even more difficult. A good friend lately 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 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, consider how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s difficult to picture myself establishing a significant relationship with a person who consistently uses a tool that erodes focus and might bring about societal collapse. 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.

Consider whether your relationship criterion genuinely fits with your life objectives.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she may use ChatGPT for particular tasks but is not endorse it. In the past six months or so, she says “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 reduce my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now utilizes 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 principles, and it’s essential to find someone whose beliefs are aligned with yours.”

Others Who Share the ChatGPT Ick.

Other people get the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and works in 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 disable. Pereira thinks that using ChatGPT “demonstrates such a laziness”.

“It’s like you are unable to think for yourself, and you have to rely on an app for that,” she said.

Two of Pereira’s friends lately had a messy breakup. She sided with one of them after discovering the other went to ChatGPT, a infamously awful therapy alternative, not their partner, when they needed to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they didn’t want to sit through any uncomfortable human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to deal with something and continue, 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 is a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is likewise skeptical. “I don’t know if I would think otherwise 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.”

Celebrity and Industry Resistance.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “rather die” than use AI tools, it made headlines. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories rant against the tech cautioning 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 issued statements that are critical of AI in their respective industries. I believe these quotes spread widely for a reason: people sympathize with them.

This sentiment exists even among those in the tech sector. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely deactivate, similar slop 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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