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The setting could have been taken from a Nancy Meyers production. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that smelled of stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is ideal,” I remarked to the future groom. He moved closer as if sharing a secret: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

My smile was polite as he detailed how generative AI assisted in the wedding planning. (A real wedding planner was also hired.) I replied politely. Internally, though, I decided: if my future spouse approached to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Contemporary Dating Red Flags: Artificial Intelligence Usage.

Some people have common relationship dealbreakers. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. During the past few months, as alarms of an approaching AI-induced apocalypse have dominated my social media and social conversations, I’ve come up with a new one. I will not see someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool really, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the target of my disdain.)

People often pose the “what if” questions. Suppose I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? Imagine if I use it to help people? How about 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.

When a Minor ‘Ick’ Turns Into a Moral Stand.

The phrase “getting the ick” refers to that feeling of being unexpectedly turned off. Part of having an ick is not really understanding why you considered someone’s behavior so unseemly. For example, 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 automatic feeling of revulsion that had no any solid reasoning.

But here we are, in fall 2025, and using the tool even for benign tasks such as figuring out a fitness routine or deciding what to wear feels an more and more political choice. We know that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is marketed as a substitute for real relationships; isolated, detached 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 executives in charge of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

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

A Romantic Disaster: When Your Date Relies on ChatGPT.

It appears ChatGPT has found a way to make the dating scene even more challenging. A good friend recently told me that she went out 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 build a relationship with someone who outsources decisions, including the fun ones like picking where to eat? If someone is so lazy they’ll consult ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s hard to see myself establishing a meaningful bond with a person who consistently uses a tool that diminishes concentration and might lead to societal collapse. Inquisitiveness, creativity, 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.

Ask yourself if your [dating] choice is really supporting your long-term goals.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based relationship coach, she may use ChatGPT for particular 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 asked Jackson if my rule against ChatGPT users was too harsh. She said no, proceed 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 really serving your future goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would assume that’s one of your values, and it’s essential to find someone whose values are aligned with yours.”

Others Who Have the ChatGPT Ick.

The aversion for AI applies beyond the dating sphere. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and works in sound for multiple live music venues across the city. She dreams 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 laziness”.

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

A recent acquaintance’s breakup was especially ugly. She supported one of them after discovering the other turned to ChatGPT, a notoriously awful therapy substitute, not their partner, when they needed to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they refused to sit through any uncomfortable human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Before long, I could not handle it on my own. I had grown too dependent on AI for even basic tasks.

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and works as 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 probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Celebrity and Industry Backlash.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “rather die” than use generative AI, it made news. Ditto for, 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 issued statements that are skeptical of AI in their various industries. I think 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 introduced a filter that lets users turn off AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely remove, comparable slop on Instagram. Reports suggested that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley techies won’t use AI to write their code.

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