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

I smiled tightly as this man explained using artificial intelligence for the initial stages of organizing the wedding. (They also employed a professional wedding planner.) I replied courteously. Inside, though, I decided: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Contemporary Dating Dealbreakers: Artificial Intelligence Use.

Some people have typical relationship non-negotiables. Doesn’t smoke, is a cat person, wants kids. During the past few months, as warnings of an impending AI-induced apocalypse have flooded my news feed and party conversations, I’ve developed a fresh one. I will not date someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program truly, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the object of my disdain.)

I’ve encountered all the “what if’s”. 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 individuals out there for you. But I am not one of them.

When a Minor Turn-Off Turns Into a Moral Issue.

“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 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 revulsion that lacked any clear reasoning.

But here we are, in fall 2025, and using the tool even for benign tasks such as planning a fitness routine or deciding what to wear feels an increasingly political choice. We are aware 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 megarich tech executives 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 justify the societal harm it can cause?

How AI Ruins Romance and Connection.

As if it had not done enough already, ChatGPT has in some way made dating even worse. A close acquaintance lately 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 build a relationship with someone who outsources decisions, including the fun ones like choosing where to eat? If someone is so unmotivated 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 profound, long-term connection with someone who regularly engages with a technology that’s weakening our shared attention spans and perhaps signaling total apocalypse. Inquisitiveness, originality, uniqueness – I likely won’t find what I value in someone who thinks “productivity” means asking an app to summarize a movie plot so they don’t have to waste their time, you know, watching it.

Ask yourself if your [dating] choice is truly serving your long-term goals.

Ali Jackson, a romantic coach located in New York, uses ChatGPT for some tasks – but she is not an advocate. 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 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 uses the tech.

“Ask yourself if your preference is really serving your future goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would presume that’s one of your principles, and it’s important to find someone whose values are aligned with yours.”

Others Who Have the ChatGPT Aversion.

Other people experience the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and works in sound for various live music venues across the city. She fantasizes about going into 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 laziness”.

“It’s like you can’t think for yourself, and you have to rely on an app for that,” she said.

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

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

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, shares comparable views. “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 rely on it to make a grocery list. Your life is likely not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Well-Known Figures and Tech Professionals Voicing Concerns.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “rather die” than use AI tools, it made news. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories rant against the tech cautioning about “environmental racism” and expressing fear over users who are “codependent on a machine”. Ditto still 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 reason: people agree with them.

Even, to an extent, the people who power the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users turn off AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely remove, similar content on Instagram. Reports indicated that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley professionals refuse to use AI to write their code.

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