It was a moment straight from a Nancy Meyers movie. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that reeked of discreet wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is ideal,” I told the future groom. He moved closer as if sharing a confidential detail: “I found it on ChatGPT.”
I grinned politely as this man described using generative AI for the early stages of planning the wedding. (They also employed a human wedding planner.) I responded courteously. Internally, though, I decided: if my future spouse came to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.
Many individuals have usual relationship dealbreakers. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, wants kids. During the past few months, as warnings of an impending AI-induced doomsday have flooded my news feed and party conversations, I’ve come up with a new one. I will not see someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool really, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the object of my scorn.)
I’ve heard all the “what if’s”. Suppose I use it for my job, but I dislike 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 say: there are people out there for you. But I am not one of them.
The term “getting the ick” describes 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 got the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a mere ick, a kneejerk feeling of disgust that lacked any solid reasoning.
Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for apparently simple tasks like designing a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a conscious political decision. We are aware that the energy-intensive tech depletes our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is marketed as a placebo for human connection; lonely, 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 megarich tech bros 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 benefit offset the collective damage it causes?
It seems ChatGPT has found a way to make the dating scene even more difficult. A good friend recently told me that she went out with a man, and in the morning suggested they get breakfast together. He pulled out his phone, accessed ChatGPT, and asked for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who delegates decisions, including the enjoyable ones like choosing 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 imagine forming a deep, long-term connection with someone who frequently engages with a technology that’s kneecapping our collective attention spans and perhaps signaling total apocalypse. Intellectual curiosity, originality, uniqueness – I probably won’t find what I value in someone who believes “productivity” means prompting an app to summarize a movie plot so they don’t have to spend their time, you know, watching it.
Consider whether your dating preference actually fits with your life objectives.
Ali Jackson, a romantic coach located in New York, uses ChatGPT for certain tasks – but she is not an evangelist. In the past six months or so, she says “every one” of her clients has come 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 asked Jackson if my rule against ChatGPT users was too harsh. She said no, proceed and judge, though it might reduce my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now utilizes the tech.
“Ask yourself if your choice is truly serving 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 values are aligned with yours.”
The dislike for AI extends beyond the dating realm. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and works in sound for multiple live music venues across the city. She fantasizes about going into her phone settings and deactivating 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 laziness”.
“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 recently had a messy breakup. She sided with one of them after discovering the other went 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.”
Eventually, I found not handle it on my own. I had grown too dependent on AI for even routine tasks.
Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, has comparable views. “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 rely on it to make a grocery list. Your life is likely not that hard. We can make the list together.”
When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “prefer death” than use generative AI, it made news. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade against the tech cautioning about “environmental racism” and expressing 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 critical 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 sector. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users turn off AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely deactivate, similar content on Instagram. Sources 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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Elara is a seasoned writer and digital storyteller with a passion for exploring diverse literary genres and empowering others through words.
