The scene could have been pulled from a Nancy Meyers film. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that smelled of stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is ideal,” I told the future groom. He moved closer as if sharing a confidential detail: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”
I smiled tightly as this person described using artificial intelligence for the early stages of planning the wedding. (They also employed a human wedding planner.) I replied courteously. Inside, though, I decided: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding ideas from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.
Contemporary Romantic Red Flags: AI Usage.
Some people have typical relationship dealbreakers. Doesn’t smoke, is a cat person, wants kids. Over the past few months, as warnings of an impending AI-induced apocalypse have flooded my social media and social conversations, I’ve developed a new one. I refuse to date someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program really, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the object of my scorn.)
People always ask the “what if” scenarios. Suppose 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 proofreading 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.
From ‘Ick’ to Political Position.
The phrase “getting the ick” describes that sensation of being unexpectedly turned off. Part of having an ick is not really understanding why you found someone’s behavior so unseemly. For instance, I once got the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a mere ick, a kneejerk feeling of disgust that lacked any clear reasoning.
But here we are, in fall 2025, and using the tool even for harmless tasks such as planning a fitness routine or deciding what to wear feels an increasingly political choice. We are aware that the energy-intensive tech depletes our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is sold as a placebo for real relationships; lonely, detached people finding companionship or even developing feelings with code is not as much a sci-fi plot point as it is just the way things go now. The megarich tech bros in charge of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.
OK, so ChatGPT assists you write your grocery list. Does your individual convenience outweigh the societal harm it can cause?
The Dating Problem: When 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 went out with a man, and in the morning suggested they get breakfast together. He took out his phone, accessed ChatGPT, and asked for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to 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.
I just cannot envision forming a deep, lasting connection with someone who frequently interacts with a technology that’s kneecapping our shared attention spans and perhaps heralding total apocalypse. Intellectual curiosity, creativity, originality – I probably won’t find what I prize 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] choice is truly serving your long-term goals.
According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based relationship 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 generate 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, proceed and evaluate, though it might reduce my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now uses the tech.
“Ask yourself if your choice is really supporting your future goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would presume that’s one of your values, and it’s essential to find someone whose values are aligned with yours.”
Additional Individuals Expressing AI Concerns.
The dislike for AI extends beyond the romantic sphere. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and does sound for multiple 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 nearly impossible to disable. Pereira believes that using ChatGPT “demonstrates 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 particularly ugly. She supported 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 didn’t want to sit through any uncomfortable human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to deal with something and continue, which is not how things work.”
Before long, I could not manage it on my own. I had become too dependent on AI for even routine work.
Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, shares similar sentiments. “I am not sure if I would think differently about someone who uses ChatGPT, but I would be like, ‘come on,’” he said. “You don’t need to rely on it to make a grocery list. Your life is probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”
Well-Known Figures and Tech Professionals Voicing Concerns.
Guillermo del Toro’s statement that he’d “choose death” over using AI garnered significant coverage. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade against the tech cautioning 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 make statements that are critical of AI in their various industries. I think these quotes spread widely for a cause: people sympathize with them.
This sentiment exists even among those in the tech sector. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely remove, comparable content 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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