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It felt like a scene straight from a Nancy Meyers movie. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that smelled of stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is perfect,” I told the groom-to-be. He moved closer as if revealing a confidential detail: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

My smile was courteous as he outlined how AI tools assisted in the wedding planning. (A real wedding planner was also brought in.) 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 New Dating Dealbreaker.

Some people have typical relationship dealbreakers. Doesn’t smoke, is a cat person, desires kids. During the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced doomsday have flooded my social media and social conversations, I’ve developed a fresh one. I will not see someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program really, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the object of my scorn.)

People always ask the “what if” scenarios. Suppose I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? What if I use it to assist people? How about I only use it as a editing tool – I’d never use it to “write” anything. To all that I say: there are people out there for you. But I am not one of them.

How a Simple ‘Ick’ Turns Into a Moral Issue.

The term “getting the ick” describes that feeling of being suddenly turned off. 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. At first, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a simple ick, a automatic feeling of disgust that had no any clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even using ChatGPT for seemingly innocent tasks like creating a workout plan or selecting an outfit feels like a conscious political decision. We know that the energy-intensive tech depletes our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is marketed as a placebo for human connection; isolated, disconnected people finding 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 ultra-wealthy tech bros in control of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

OK, so ChatGPT helps you write your grocery list. Does your individual convenience justify the societal harm it can cause?

A Romantic Problem: When Your Partner Uses ChatGPT.

It appears ChatGPT has managed to make the romantic scene even more challenging. A good friend lately 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 build a relationship with someone who outsources decisions, including the fun ones like picking where to eat? If someone is so lazy 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 deep, long-term connection with someone who frequently engages with a technology that’s kneecapping our collective attention spans and possibly heralding total apocalypse. Inquisitiveness, creativity, originality – I probably 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 criterion genuinely aligns with your life objectives.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based relationship coach, she does use ChatGPT for particular purposes but doesn’t endorse it. In the past six months or so, she says “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 asked Jackson if my rule against ChatGPT chumps was too harsh. She said no, go forth and judge, though it might limit 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 aligned with yours.”

Others Who Share the AI Ick.

Other people get the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and does sound for multiple live music venues across the city. She dreams about going into 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 believes that using ChatGPT “shows such a laziness”.

“It’s like you can’t 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 discovering the other turned to ChatGPT, a notoriously awful therapy alternative, not their partner, when they needed to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they didn’t want to sit through any uncomfortable human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to deal with something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Before long, I found not manage it on my own. I had grown too dependent on AI for the basic work.

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and works as a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is similarly skeptical. “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 rely on it to make a grocery list. Your life is likely not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Celebrity and Tech Backlash.

Guillermo del Toro’s statement that he’d “rather die” over using generative AI garnered significant attention. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories rant 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 make statements that are skeptical of AI in their various industries. I believe these quotes go viral for a cause: people agree with them.

Even, to an degree, the people who run the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely deactivate, similar slop on Instagram. Reports 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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