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The setting could have been taken 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 remarked to the groom-to-be. He moved closer as if revealing a secret: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

My expression was polite as he detailed how generative AI assisted in the wedding preparations. (A human wedding planner was eventually hired.) I replied politely. Inside, though, I resolved: if my future spouse came to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The New Relationship Non-Negotiable.

Some people have typical relationship dealbreakers. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, wants kids. During the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced apocalypse have flooded my social media and party conversations, I’ve developed a fresh one. I refuse to see someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool really, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the target 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 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 individuals out there for you. But I am not one of them.

From Disgust to Political Stance.

“Getting the ick” is what we occasionally call being repulsed. Part of having an ick is not really understanding why you found someone’s behavior so unseemly. For example, I once felt the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a mere ick, a automatic feeling of revulsion that lacked any clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even using ChatGPT for apparently simple tasks like creating a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a deliberate moral act. We are aware that the power-hungry tech drains our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is sold as a placebo for human connection; lonely, 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 ultra-wealthy tech executives in control of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

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

A Dating Problem: If Your Partner Relies on ChatGPT.

It seems ChatGPT has found a way to make the romantic scene even more challenging. A good friend recently told me that she went out with a man, and in the morning proposed they get breakfast together. He pulled out his phone, opened ChatGPT, and requested for restaurant suggestions. Why build a relationship with someone who delegates decisions, including the fun ones like choosing where to eat? If someone is so lazy they’ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, imagine how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s hard to picture myself building a significant relationship with a person who consistently uses a tool that diminishes concentration and might bring about societal collapse. Intellectual curiosity, originality, uniqueness – I likely won’t find what I prize in someone who believes “productivity” means prompting 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] preference is really 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 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 harsh. She said no, go forth and evaluate, though it might limit my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now utilizes 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 important to find someone whose values are aligned with yours.”

Others Who Share the ChatGPT Ick.

The aversion for AI applies beyond the dating sphere. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and does sound for multiple 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 disable. Pereira thinks that using ChatGPT “shows such a lack of initiative”.

“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 supported 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 sit through any uncomfortable human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to deal with 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 simplest things [at work].

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, shares comparable 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 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.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “prefer death” than use AI tools, it made headlines. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories rant 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 respective industries. I believe these quotes spread widely for a reason: people agree with them.

This attitude exists even among those in 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 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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