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It was a scene straight from a Nancy Meyers film. We were 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 groom-to-be. He moved closer as if revealing a secret: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

My expression was courteous as he outlined how generative AI helped in the wedding preparations. (A real wedding planner was also hired.) I responded politely. Inside, though, I decided: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Modern Romantic Red Flags: AI Usage.

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

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

When a Simple ‘Ick’ Becomes a Ethical Stand.

The phrase “getting the ick” refers to that sensation of being unexpectedly turned off. A key aspect of having an ick is not fully understanding why you considered someone’s behavior so unseemly. For example, I once got the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. At first, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a mere ick, a kneejerk feeling of revulsion that lacked any solid reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even using ChatGPT for seemingly innocent tasks like creating a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a conscious political decision. We know that the power-hungry tech drains our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is marketed as a placebo for real relationships; isolated, detached 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 bros in control of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

Sure, ChatGPT can generate your shopping list. But does that individual benefit offset the wider damage it creates?

How ChatGPT Ruins Dating and Intimacy.

As if it hadn’t done enough already, ChatGPT has somehow made dating even worse. A close acquaintance 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 requested for restaurant suggestions. Why build a relationship with someone who outsources decisions, including the enjoyable ones like choosing where to eat? If someone is so lazy they’ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, imagine how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s hard to picture myself building a meaningful relationship with a person who often uses a tool that diminishes concentration and might lead to societal collapse. Inquisitiveness, originality, uniqueness – I probably won’t find what I value in someone who believes “productivity” means asking an app to recap a movie plot so they don’t have to waste their time, you know, watching it.

Ask yourself if your [dating] choice is really serving your long-term goals.

Ali Jackson, a romantic coach based in New York, uses 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 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 strike against ChatGPT chumps was too harsh. She said no, go forth and evaluate, though it might reduce my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now utilizes the tech.

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

Others Who Have the AI Ick.

The aversion for AI applies 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 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 recently had a messy breakup. She supported one of them after discovering the other turned to ChatGPT, a infamously poor therapy alternative, not their partner, when they wanted to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they didn’t want to sit through any difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process something and continue, which is not how things work.”

Before long, I could not handle it on my own. I had become too dependent on AI for the basic work.

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

Public Figures and Tech Insiders Voicing Concerns.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “prefer death” than use generative AI, it made news. 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”. Ditto still for when Simu Liu, Alison Roman, Céline Dion, Emily Blunt, and others make statements that are critical of AI in their respective industries. I think these quotes spread widely for a cause: people agree with them.

Even, to an extent, the people who power the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users turn off AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely remove, similar slop on Instagram. Reports suggested that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley professionals won’t use AI to write their code.

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