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It felt like a moment lifted from a Nancy Meyers movie. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that reeked of stealth wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is perfect,” I told the groom-to-be. He leaned in as if revealing a confidential detail: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

My smile was courteous as he detailed how AI tools assisted in the wedding planning. (A real wedding planner was also hired.) I responded politely. Inside, though, I resolved: if my future spouse approached to me with wedding input courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Contemporary Romantic Dealbreakers: Artificial Intelligence Use.

Many individuals have standard romantic non-negotiables. Doesn’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. Over the past few months, as alarms of an approaching AI-induced apocalypse have flooded my social media and social conversations, I’ve developed a fresh one. I refuse to date someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program truly, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the target of my disdain.)

People always pose the “what if” scenarios. Suppose I use it for my job, but I dislike it otherwise? What if I use it to help people? How about I only use it as a proofreading 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 Minor Turn-Off Turns Into a Moral Issue.

“Getting the ick” is what we occasionally call being repulsed. Part of having an ick is not fully understanding why you found someone’s behavior so off-putting. For instance, I once got the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. At first, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a simple ick, a automatic feeling of disgust that lacked any solid reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even using ChatGPT for seemingly simple tasks like creating a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a deliberate political decision. We are aware that the power-hungry tech drains our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is sold as a substitute for real relationships; isolated, disconnected people discovering companionship or even falling in love with code is not as much a science fiction 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.

OK, so ChatGPT assists you write your grocery list. Does your individual ease outweigh the societal harm it can cause?

How AI Ruins Romance and Intimacy.

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 requested for restaurant suggestions. Why build a relationship with someone who delegates decisions, including the fun 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.

It’s difficult to picture myself building a meaningful bond with a person who consistently uses a tool that diminishes concentration and might bring about societal collapse. Inquisitiveness, originality, uniqueness – I probably won’t find what I prize in someone who thinks “productivity” means prompting an app to recap a movie plot so they don’t have to waste their time, you know, watching it.

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

Ali Jackson, a dating and relationship coach based in New York, employs ChatGPT for certain tasks – but she is not an evangelist. In the past six months or so, she states “every one” of her clients has come 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 strike against ChatGPT chumps was too strict. She said no, proceed and judge, though it might limit my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now uses 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 values, and it’s essential to find someone whose values are aligned with yours.”

More People Expressing ChatGPT Apprehensions.

The aversion for AI applies beyond the dating realm. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and does sound for multiple live music venues across the city. She fantasizes about going into her phone settings and deactivating AI features on all her apps, though tech platforms from Google to Spotify make it almost impossible to opt out. Pereira thinks that using ChatGPT “shows 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.

Two of Pereira’s friends lately had a messy breakup. She supported one of them after learning the other turned to ChatGPT, a infamously awful therapy alternative, not their partner, when they needed to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they refused to endure any difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process 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 most basic things [at work].

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

Celebrity and Industry Backlash.

Guillermo del Toro’s declaration that he’d “rather die” over using AI received significant coverage. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade against the tech warning 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 skeptical of AI in their respective industries. I believe 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 mute, but not entirely deactivate, comparable slop on Instagram. Sources indicated that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley techies won’t use AI to write their code.

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