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The setting 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 close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is ideal,” I told the future groom. He moved closer as if revealing a secret: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

I grinned politely as this person described using generative AI for the initial stages of organizing the wedding. (They also employed a human wedding planner.) I responded courteously. Inside, though, I resolved: if my future spouse came to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The Latest Dating Non-Negotiable.

Some people have common relationship non-negotiables. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. During the past few months, as alarms of an approaching AI-induced apocalypse have flooded my news feed and party conversations, I’ve come up with a fresh one. I refuse to date someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool really, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the target of my disdain.)

People often pose the “what if” scenarios. 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 respond: there are individuals out there for you. But I am not one of them.

How a Simple Turn-Off Turns Into a Ethical Issue.

“Getting the ick” is what we sometimes call being turned off. Part of having an ick is not really understanding why you found someone’s behavior so off-putting. For instance, I once got the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a simple ick, a kneejerk feeling of revulsion that lacked any solid reasoning.

But here we are, in autumn 2025, and using the program even for benign tasks such as planning a fitness routine or choosing what to wear feels an more and more ethical choice. We know that the energy-intensive tech drains our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is sold as a substitute for human connection; isolated, disconnected people finding companionship or even developing feelings with code is not as much a sci-fi scenario 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 convenience justify the broader harm it can cause?

A Dating Disaster: When Your Partner Relies on ChatGPT.

It seems ChatGPT has found a way to make the dating scene even more difficult. A good friend recently told me that she spent a night with a man, and in the morning suggested they get breakfast together. He took out his phone, opened ChatGPT, and asked for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who outsources decisions, including the enjoyable 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 envision forming a profound, lasting connection with someone who regularly interacts with a technology that’s weakening our shared attention spans and perhaps signaling total apocalypse. Inquisitiveness, originality, originality – I likely won’t find what I prize in someone who believes “productivity” means asking an app to summarize a movie plot so they don’t have to spend their time, you know, watching it.

Reflect on whether your relationship preference genuinely aligns with your long-term aims.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based relationship coach, she may use ChatGPT for particular purposes but doesn’t endorse it. In the past six months or so, she states “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 strike 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 supporting your long-term goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would assume that’s one of your principles, and it’s important to find someone whose values are in sync with yours.”

More Individuals Voicing ChatGPT Concerns.

The dislike for AI extends beyond the romantic realm. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and does sound for various live music venues across the city. She dreams about accessing her phone settings and disabling AI features on all her apps, though tech platforms from Google to Spotify make it almost impossible to opt out. Pereira thinks 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.

Two of Pereira’s friends lately had a complicated breakup. 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 endure any difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to deal with something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Suddenly I was unable to do it by myself. I was too dependent on AI to do the simplest things [at work].

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, shares similar views. “I am not sure 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 Industry Resistance.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “rather die” than use generative AI, it made headlines. 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 issued statements that are critical of AI in their various industries. I think these quotes spread widely for a cause: people agree with them.

Even, to an extent, the people who run the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely deactivate, comparable content on Instagram. Sources indicated that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley techies refuse to use AI to write their code.

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