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It felt like a moment straight 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 venue is perfect,” I remarked to 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 helped in the wedding planning. (A real wedding planner was eventually hired.) I replied politely. Inside, however, I resolved: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The Latest Relationship Dealbreaker.

Many individuals have usual relationship dealbreakers. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, wants kids. Over the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced apocalypse have flooded my news feed and party conversations, I’ve developed a new one. I will not see someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool really, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the object of my scorn.)

I’ve encountered all the “what if’s”. What if I use it for my job, but I dislike 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 respond: there are people out there for you. But I am not one of them.

How a Minor Turn-Off Becomes a Ethical Issue.

The phrase “getting the ick” describes that sensation of being unexpectedly disgusted. A key aspect of having an ick is not really 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. Initially, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a simple ick, a kneejerk 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 figuring out a fitness routine or choosing what to wear feels an more and more political choice. We know that the energy-intensive tech drains our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is marketed as a placebo for real relationships; isolated, disconnected people finding 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 executives in charge of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

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

How ChatGPT Ruins Dating and Connection.

It appears ChatGPT has managed to make the romantic scene even more challenging. A close acquaintance lately told me that she spent a night with a man, and in the morning proposed they get breakfast together. He took out his phone, accessed ChatGPT, and asked for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who delegates decisions, including the fun ones like picking where to eat? If someone is so lazy they’ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, imagine how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s hard to picture myself building a meaningful relationship with a person who often uses a tool that erodes concentration and might lead to societal collapse. Intellectual curiosity, originality, originality – 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 spend their time, you know, watching it.

Consider whether your relationship preference actually fits with your long-term objectives.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based relationship coach, she does use ChatGPT for specific purposes but is not promote it. In the past six months or so, she says “every one” of her clients has approached 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 inquired Jackson if my rule against ChatGPT chumps was too harsh. She said no, go forth and evaluate, though it might limit my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now uses the tech.

“Ask yourself if your preference is truly supporting your future goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would presume that’s one of your principles, and it’s important to find someone whose beliefs are aligned with yours.”

Others Who Have the ChatGPT Aversion.

The dislike for AI applies beyond the dating realm. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and works in 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 nearly impossible to disable. Pereira thinks that using ChatGPT “demonstrates 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 acquaintance’s breakup was particularly messy. She supported one of them after learning the other turned to ChatGPT, a infamously awful 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 process 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, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, shares similar sentiments. “I don’t know 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.”

Celebrity and Tech Resistance.

Guillermo del Toro’s declaration that he’d “rather die” over using generative AI received significant coverage. 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 think these quotes spread widely for a cause: people sympathize with them.

This attitude is present even among those in the tech sector. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users turn off AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely remove, comparable content 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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