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The scene could have been pulled from a Nancy Meyers production. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that reeked of stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is perfect,” I told the future groom. He leaned in as if revealing a confidential detail: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

I smiled tightly as this man explained using generative AI for the early stages of organizing the wedding. (They also employed a professional wedding planner.) I responded courteously. Inside, though, I resolved: if my prospective spouse approached to me with wedding input courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Modern Romantic Red Flags: Artificial Intelligence Usage.

Many individuals have usual relationship non-negotiables. Doesn’t smoke, is a cat person, desires kids. During the past few months, as warnings of an approaching AI-induced doomsday have flooded my social media and social conversations, I’ve come up with a fresh one. I will not see someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool truly, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the object of my disdain.)

People often ask the “what if” questions. Suppose I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? Imagine if I use it to help people? How about 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.

How a Minor Turn-Off Turns Into a Moral Issue.

The phrase “getting the ick” refers to that sensation of being unexpectedly turned off. Part of having an ick is not fully 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 disgust that lacked any solid reasoning.

But here we are, in autumn 2025, and using the tool even for benign tasks such as figuring out a fitness routine or deciding what to wear feels an increasingly political choice. We are aware that the energy-intensive tech drains our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is marketed as a substitute for real relationships; lonely, disconnected people discovering 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 bros in charge of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

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

The Romantic Disaster: When Your Partner Relies on ChatGPT.

It appears ChatGPT has found a way 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 pulled out his phone, accessed 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 unmotivated they’ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, imagine how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s difficult to see myself establishing a meaningful relationship with a person who consistently uses a tool that erodes concentration and might lead to societal collapse. Intellectual curiosity, creativity, uniqueness – I probably 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.

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

Ali Jackson, a dating and relationship coach based in New York, employs ChatGPT for some tasks – but she is not an evangelist. 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 create 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 reduce my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now uses the tech.

“Ask yourself if your preference is really serving your long-term goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would presume that’s one of your principles, and it’s essential to find someone whose beliefs are aligned with yours.”

More People Voicing AI Apprehensions.

Other people experience the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and does sound for various live music venues across the city. She fantasizes about accessing 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 believes 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 lately had a messy breakup. She sided with one of them after discovering the other turned to ChatGPT, a infamously 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 deal with something and move on, 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, who is 31 and works as a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is likewise weary. “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 probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Well-Known Personalities and Tech Professionals Speaking Out.

Guillermo del Toro’s declaration that he’d “choose death” over using generative AI garnered significant coverage. Similarly, 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 issued statements that are skeptical of AI in their respective industries. I believe these quotes go viral for a reason: people agree with them.

This sentiment exists 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 deactivate, comparable slop on Instagram. Reports suggested that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley professionals refuse to use AI to write their code.

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