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The setting could have been taken from a Nancy Meyers production. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that reeked of discreet wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is perfect,” I remarked to the groom-to-be. He leaned in as if revealing a confidential detail: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

My smile was courteous as he outlined how generative AI assisted in the wedding planning. (A real wedding planner was eventually brought in.) I replied politely. Inside, however, I resolved: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding input from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Contemporary Dating Red Flags: AI Use.

Some people have typical relationship non-negotiables. Doesn’t smoke, is a cat person, desires kids. Over the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced apocalypse have dominated my news feed and social conversations, I’ve come up with a fresh one. I will not date someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program really, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the target of my disdain.)

People often 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 people out there for you. But I am not one of them.

How a Minor ‘Ick’ Turns Into a Moral Issue.

“Getting the ick” is what we occasionally call being repulsed. Part of having an ick is not really understanding why you considered someone’s behavior so off-putting. For example, I once got the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a mere ick, a kneejerk feeling of disgust that had no any clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for apparently simple tasks like designing a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a deliberate political act. We are aware that the power-hungry tech drains our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is marketed as a placebo for real relationships; lonely, 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 executives in charge of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

Sure, ChatGPT can generate your shopping list. But does that individual advantage excuse the wider damage it causes?

How AI Ruins Dating and Intimacy.

It seems ChatGPT has managed to make the romantic scene even more difficult. A close acquaintance recently told me that she went out with a man, and in the morning proposed they get breakfast together. He took out his phone, opened ChatGPT, and asked for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who delegates decisions, including the fun ones like choosing 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 difficult to see myself establishing a significant bond with a person who consistently uses a tool that erodes focus and might bring about societal collapse. Intellectual curiosity, originality, uniqueness – I likely won’t find what I prize in someone who thinks “productivity” means asking an app to summarize a movie plot so they don’t have to spend their time, you know, watching it.

Ask yourself if your [dating] choice is really serving your future goals.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she does use ChatGPT for specific tasks but doesn’t endorse it. In the past six months or so, she says “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 rule against ChatGPT chumps was too harsh. She said no, proceed and judge, though it might limit my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now utilizes the tech.

“Ask yourself if your preference is really supporting your future goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would assume that’s one of your principles, and it’s essential to find someone whose values are in sync with yours.”

Others Who Share the AI Ick.

Other people get the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and works in sound for various live music venues across the city. She fantasizes about accessing her phone settings and disabling AI features on all her apps, though tech platforms from Google to Spotify make it nearly impossible to disable. 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.

A recent friend’s split was especially messy. She sided with one of them after learning the other turned to ChatGPT, a infamously awful therapy substitute, not their partner, when they wanted 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 continue, which is not how things work.”

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

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and is a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is similarly 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 shouldn’t have to rely on it to make a grocery list. Your life is probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Celebrity and Industry Resistance.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “rather die” than use AI tools, it made news. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories rant 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 cause: people agree with them.

Even, to an extent, the people who run 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 content on Instagram. Sources suggested that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley professionals refuse to use AI to write their code.

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