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It was a moment lifted 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 location is ideal,” I told the groom-to-be. He leaned in as if revealing a secret: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

I grinned tightly as this person explained using artificial intelligence for the initial stages of planning the wedding. (They also hired a professional wedding planner.) I responded courteously. Inside, though, I decided: if my prospective spouse approached to me with wedding input courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The Latest Relationship Dealbreaker.

Some people have common relationship dealbreakers. Doesn’t smoke, is a cat person, wants kids. Over the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced doomsday have dominated my social media and party conversations, I’ve developed 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 object of my scorn.)

People always ask the “what if” scenarios. What if I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? What if I use it to assist 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 individuals out there for you. But I am not one of them.

When a Simple ‘Ick’ Becomes a Ethical Stand.

“Getting the ick” is what we occasionally call being turned off. A key aspect 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 mere ick, a kneejerk feeling of disgust that had no any solid reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even using ChatGPT for seemingly innocent tasks like designing a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a deliberate political decision. We know that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is marketed as a placebo for real relationships; lonely, disconnected people discovering companionship or even developing feelings with code is not as much a sci-fi scenario 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 ease outweigh the societal harm it can cause?

A Romantic Problem: If Your Date Relies on ChatGPT.

As if it hadn’t done enough already, ChatGPT has in some way made dating even worse. A good friend 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, opened ChatGPT, and requested for restaurant suggestions. Why build a relationship with someone who outsources decisions, including the enjoyable 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.

I just cannot envision forming a deep, long-term connection with someone who regularly engages with a technology that’s kneecapping our collective attention spans and possibly signaling total apocalypse. Intellectual curiosity, creativity, uniqueness – I likely won’t find what I value in someone who believes “productivity” means prompting an app to summarize a movie plot so they don’t have to spend their time, you know, watching it.

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

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she may use ChatGPT for specific tasks but doesn’t 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 create everything on their dating apps – all the way down to the DMs they send. I inquired 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 utilizes the tech.

“Ask yourself if your choice is truly 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 values are aligned with yours.”

Additional Individuals Expressing ChatGPT Concerns.

The dislike for AI extends beyond the romantic realm. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and does sound for various live music venues across the city. She dreams about accessing 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 believes that using ChatGPT “demonstrates 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 friend’s breakup was particularly messy. She sided with one of them after learning the other went to ChatGPT, a notoriously poor therapy alternative, not their partner, when they needed to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they refused to endure any uncomfortable human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process something and continue, which is not how things work.”

Suddenly I was unable to do it by myself. I was too dependent on AI to do the most basic things [at work].

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, shares comparable views. “I am not sure 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 Resistance.

Guillermo del Toro’s statement that he’d “choose death” over using AI received significant attention. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories rant against the tech cautioning about “environmental racism” and expressing 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 skeptical of AI in their respective industries. I think these quotes go viral for a cause: people sympathize with them.

This sentiment is present even among those in the tech sector. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely remove, comparable 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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