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It felt like a moment lifted from a Nancy Meyers movie. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that reeked of discreet wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is ideal,” I remarked to the future groom. He leaned in as if sharing a secret: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

My smile was courteous as he detailed how AI tools assisted in the wedding planning. (A human wedding planner was eventually hired.) I responded politely. Inside, though, I decided: if my future spouse came to me with wedding ideas from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Contemporary Dating Dealbreakers: Artificial Intelligence Use.

Some people have common relationship non-negotiables. Doesn’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 fresh one. I will not see someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool really, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the object of my scorn.)

I’ve encountered all the “what if’s”. What if I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? Imagine if I use it to assist people? What if I only use it as a proofreading tool – I’d never use it to “write” anything. To all that I say: there are individuals out there for you. But I am not one of them.

When a Minor Turn-Off Becomes a Ethical Issue.

“Getting the ick” is what we occasionally call being repulsed. Part of having an ick is not fully understanding why you found someone’s behavior so unseemly. For instance, I once felt the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a simple ick, a kneejerk feeling of revulsion that had no any solid reasoning.

But here we are, in autumn 2025, and using the program even for harmless tasks such as figuring out a fitness routine or deciding what to wear feels an more and more ethical choice. We know that the energy-intensive tech drains our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is marketed as a placebo for real relationships; lonely, disconnected people finding companionship or even developing feelings with code is not as much a science fiction plot point as it is just the way things go now. The megarich tech bros in control of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

OK, so ChatGPT assists you write your grocery list. Does your individual ease outweigh the societal harm it can cause?

How ChatGPT Spoils Dating and Connection.

It appears ChatGPT has managed to make the romantic scene even more challenging. A good friend recently 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 get close to 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, imagine how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot imagine forming a deep, lasting connection with someone who frequently engages with a technology that’s kneecapping our shared attention spans and perhaps heralding total apocalypse. Intellectual curiosity, creativity, originality – 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] preference is truly supporting your long-term goals.

Ali Jackson, a romantic coach based in New York, uses ChatGPT for certain tasks – but she is not an advocate. In the past six months or so, she says “every one” of her clients has come 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 strict. 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 preference is truly serving your long-term goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would presume that’s one of your values, and it’s important to find someone whose values are aligned with yours.”

More Individuals Voicing AI Concerns.

The aversion for AI applies beyond the romantic realm. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and works in sound for multiple 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 thinks that using ChatGPT “shows such a laziness”.

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

Two of Pereira’s friends lately had a messy breakup. She sided with one of them after learning the other went to ChatGPT, a notoriously awful therapy alternative, not their partner, when they wanted 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 move on, which is not how things work.”

Eventually, I found not manage it on my own. I had grown too reliant on AI for even basic tasks.

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, shares comparable sentiments. “I don’t know if I would think otherwise about someone who uses ChatGPT, but I would be like, ‘come on,’” he said. “You don’t need to depend on it to make a grocery list. Your life is probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Public Figures and Tech Insiders Speaking Out.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “prefer death” than use generative AI, it made headlines. 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 various 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 turn off AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely remove, similar slop on Instagram. Sources suggested that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley techies refuse to use AI to write their code.

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