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It was a scene lifted from a Nancy Meyers movie. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that smelled of discreet wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is ideal,” I told the future groom. He leaned in as if sharing a secret: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

I grinned tightly as this person described using generative AI for the initial stages of planning the wedding. (They also employed a human wedding planner.) I replied courteously. Inside, though, I resolved: if my prospective spouse approached to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The Latest Relationship Dealbreaker.

Many individuals have usual romantic non-negotiables. Won’t smoke, is a cat person, wants kids. During the past few months, as alarms of an approaching AI-induced apocalypse have dominated my news feed and party conversations, I’ve come up with a new one. I refuse to see someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool really, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the target of my disdain.)

People always ask the “what if” scenarios. 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.

How a Simple ‘Ick’ Becomes a Moral Issue.

The term “getting the ick” describes that sensation of being suddenly turned off. Part of having an ick is not fully understanding why you considered someone’s behavior so off-putting. 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 kneejerk feeling of disgust that had no any solid reasoning.

But here we are, in fall 2025, and using the program even for harmless tasks such as figuring out a fitness routine or choosing what to wear feels an increasingly political choice. We know that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and increases 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 sci-fi plot point as it is just the way things go now. The ultra-wealthy tech executives 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 convenience justify the societal harm it can cause?

A Dating Disaster: When Your Partner Uses ChatGPT.

It seems ChatGPT has found a way to make the dating scene even more difficult. A close acquaintance lately told me that she went out with a man, and in the morning suggested they get breakfast together. He pulled out his phone, opened ChatGPT, and requested for restaurant suggestions. Why build a relationship with someone who outsources decisions, including the fun ones like choosing where to eat? If someone is so lazy they’ll consult ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how minimal 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 diminishes concentration and might bring about societal collapse. Inquisitiveness, originality, originality – I likely won’t find what I value in someone who believes “productivity” means asking an app to recap a movie plot so they don’t have to spend their time, you know, watching it.

Ask yourself if your [dating] preference is truly supporting your long-term goals.

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

“Ask yourself if your preference is really supporting 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 values are in sync with yours.”

More People Expressing AI Concerns.

The dislike for AI extends beyond the romantic sphere. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and works in sound for multiple live music venues across the city. She dreams about accessing her phone settings and disabling AI features on all her apps, though tech platforms from Google to Spotify make it almost impossible to opt out. Pereira believes 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.

Two of Pereira’s friends lately had a complicated breakup. She sided with one of them after learning the other turned to ChatGPT, a notoriously poor therapy alternative, not their partner, when they needed to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they didn’t want to sit through any difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to deal with something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Suddenly I couldn’t do it by myself. I was too dependent on AI to do the simplest things [at work].

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and works as a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is likewise weary. “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 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.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “rather die” than use AI tools, it made news. 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 issued statements that are critical of AI in their respective industries. I believe these quotes go viral for a reason: people agree with them.

Even, to an degree, the people who power the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely deactivate, similar slop on Instagram. Sources suggested that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley professionals won’t use AI to write their code.

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