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It was a moment lifted from a Nancy Meyers film. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that smelled of discreet wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is perfect,” I remarked to the groom-to-be. He moved closer as if revealing a confidential detail: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

My expression was courteous as he detailed how AI tools assisted in the wedding preparations. (A real wedding planner was eventually brought in.) I replied politely. Internally, though, I resolved: if my prospective spouse approached to me with wedding ideas from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Contemporary Romantic Red Flags: Artificial Intelligence Usage.

Some people have typical relationship non-negotiables. Doesn’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. Over the past few months, as warnings of an impending AI-induced doomsday have dominated my news feed and social conversations, I’ve developed a fresh one. I refuse to date someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool really, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the target of my scorn.)

People always pose the “what if” scenarios. What if I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? What if I use it to help people? What if 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.

From Disgust to Ethical Stance.

“Getting the ick” is what we sometimes call being turned off. Part of having an ick is not really understanding why you considered someone’s behavior so unseemly. For example, I once felt the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. At first, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a simple ick, a kneejerk feeling of disgust that lacked any clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for seemingly simple tasks like creating a workout plan or selecting an outfit feels like a deliberate political act. We know that the energy-intensive tech drains our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is sold as a placebo for real relationships; lonely, detached people discovering companionship or even developing feelings with code is not as much a science fiction scenario as it is just the way things go now. The megarich tech bros in charge of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

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

How ChatGPT Spoils Romance and Intimacy.

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 spent a night with a man, and in the morning suggested they get breakfast together. He took out his phone, accessed ChatGPT, and requested for restaurant suggestions. Why build a relationship with someone who delegates decisions, including the fun ones like picking where to eat? If someone is so unmotivated they’ll consult ChatGPT to plan a first date, imagine how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot imagine forming a profound, long-term connection with someone who regularly interacts with a technology that’s kneecapping our shared attention spans and perhaps signaling total apocalypse. Intellectual curiosity, originality, originality – I probably won’t find what I value in someone who thinks “productivity” means asking an app to recap a movie plot so they don’t have to waste their time, you know, watching it.

Ask yourself if your [dating] choice is really supporting your long-term goals.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she does use ChatGPT for specific purposes but is not promote it. In the past six months or so, she states “every one” of her clients has approached her complaining 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 strict. She said no, go forth 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 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 beliefs are aligned with yours.”

Additional Individuals Voicing AI Apprehensions.

The dislike for AI applies beyond the dating sphere. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and works in sound for various live music venues across the city. She fantasizes about going into her phone settings and disabling AI features on all her apps, though tech platforms from Google to Spotify make it nearly impossible to opt out. Pereira believes that using ChatGPT “shows 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.

Two of Pereira’s friends recently had a complicated breakup. She sided with one of them after discovering the other turned to ChatGPT, a notoriously poor therapy alternative, not their partner, when they needed 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.”

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

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, has 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 shouldn’t have to depend on it to make a grocery list. Your life is probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Celebrity and Tech Resistance.

Guillermo del Toro’s declaration that he’d “rather die” over using generative AI received significant coverage. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade 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 skeptical of AI in their respective industries. I believe these quotes spread widely for a cause: people agree with them.

This attitude is present even among those in the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users disable 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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