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

My expression was polite as he detailed how AI tools assisted in the wedding planning. (A human wedding planner was eventually hired.) I replied courteously. Inside, however, I resolved: if my future spouse came to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The New Dating Dealbreaker.

Some people have common relationship dealbreakers. 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 social conversations, I’ve developed 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 disdain.)

People always pose the “what if” scenarios. 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 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 ‘Ick’ to Political Stance.

The phrase “getting the ick” refers to that feeling of being suddenly turned off. Part of having an ick is not fully understanding why you found someone’s behavior so unseemly. For instance, I once felt the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. At first, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a simple ick, a kneejerk feeling of disgust that lacked any solid reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even using ChatGPT for apparently simple tasks like designing a workout plan or selecting an outfit feels like a conscious political decision. We are aware that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is sold as a placebo for real relationships; isolated, disconnected people finding companionship or even falling in love with code is not as much a sci-fi plot point as it is just the way things go now. The ultra-wealthy tech bros in charge of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

Sure, ChatGPT can create your shopping list. But does that personal benefit offset the wider damage it creates?

The Romantic Problem: If Your Date Relies on ChatGPT.

As if it had not done enough already, ChatGPT has somehow made dating even worse. A close acquaintance lately told me that she spent a night with a man, and in the morning suggested they get breakfast together. He pulled out his phone, accessed ChatGPT, and requested for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who outsources decisions, including the enjoyable ones like picking where to eat? If someone is so unmotivated they’ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s difficult to picture myself establishing a meaningful bond with a person who consistently uses a tool that diminishes focus and might lead to societal collapse. Inquisitiveness, originality, originality – I likely won’t find what I prize in someone who believes “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 actually aligns with your long-term aims.

Ali Jackson, a dating and relationship coach located in New York, employs ChatGPT for certain tasks – but she is not an advocate. In the past six months or so, she says “every one” of her clients has approached her complaining about “chatfishing” or people who use AI to generate everything on their dating apps – all the way down to the DMs they send. I inquired Jackson if my strike against ChatGPT chumps 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 choice is really serving your long-term 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 in sync with yours.”

Others Who Share the ChatGPT Ick.

The dislike for AI extends beyond the dating sphere. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and works in sound for various 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 nearly impossible to disable. Pereira believes that using ChatGPT “shows such a lack of initiative”.

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

A recent acquaintance’s split was especially ugly. She sided with one of them after discovering the other turned to ChatGPT, a notoriously awful therapy alternative, 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 continue, which is not how things work.”

Before long, I could not manage it on my own. I had grown too reliant on AI for even routine work.

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, shares similar views. “I don’t know if I would think otherwise 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 Tech Backlash.

Guillermo del Toro’s declaration that he’d “choose death” over using AI garnered significant attention. 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 skeptical of AI in their various industries. I think these quotes spread widely for a cause: people sympathize with them.

This attitude exists even among those in 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 slop on Instagram. Reports indicated that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley professionals refuse to use AI to write their code.

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