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The setting could have been pulled from a Nancy Meyers film. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that smelled of stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is ideal,” I told the groom-to-be. He leaned in as if sharing a secret: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

My expression was courteous as he detailed how AI tools assisted in the wedding planning. (A human wedding planner was eventually brought in.) I responded politely. Internally, however, I decided: if my future spouse approached to me with wedding input courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The Latest Relationship Dealbreaker.

Many individuals have standard romantic dealbreakers. Doesn’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. During the past few months, as warnings of an approaching AI-induced doomsday have dominated my social media and social conversations, I’ve come up with a fresh one. I refuse to see someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool really, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the object of my disdain.)

I’ve heard all the “what if’s”. Suppose I use it for my job, but I dislike 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.

From ‘Ick’ to Ethical Position.

The term “getting the ick” describes that sensation of being unexpectedly disgusted. A key aspect 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. Initially, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a mere ick, a kneejerk feeling of revulsion that had no any clear reasoning.

But here we are, in fall 2025, and using the program even for harmless tasks such as figuring out a fitness routine or choosing what to wear feels an more and more political choice. We know that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is marketed as a substitute for real relationships; isolated, detached people finding companionship or even developing feelings with code is not as much a sci-fi plot point 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.

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

How ChatGPT Spoils Romance and Connection.

As if it had not done enough already, ChatGPT has somehow made dating even worse. A close acquaintance 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, accessed ChatGPT, and asked for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who outsources decisions, including the fun ones like choosing 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 hard to picture myself establishing a meaningful bond with a person who consistently uses a tool that erodes focus and might lead to societal collapse. Inquisitiveness, originality, originality – I likely won’t find what I prize in someone who believes “productivity” means asking an app to recap a movie plot so they don’t have to spend their time, you know, watching it.

Reflect on whether your dating preference genuinely fits with your life aims.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she does use ChatGPT for particular tasks but is not endorse it. In the past six months or so, she states “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 inquired Jackson if my strike against ChatGPT chumps was too strict. She said no, proceed and evaluate, though it might limit my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now utilizes the tech.

“Ask yourself if your preference is really serving your future 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 Have the AI Ick.

The aversion for AI extends beyond the romantic realm. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and does sound for various 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 disable. Pereira believes that using ChatGPT “demonstrates such a laziness”.

“It’s like you can’t think for yourself, and you have to depend on an app for that,” she said.

A recent friend’s breakup was especially messy. She sided with one of them after learning the other went to ChatGPT, a infamously awful therapy alternative, not their partner, when they needed to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they refused to endure any uncomfortable human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Before long, I found not manage it on my own. I had grown too reliant on AI for even routine work.

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, shares 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 depend on it to make a grocery list. Your life is likely not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Celebrity and Industry Resistance.

Guillermo del Toro’s statement that he’d “choose death” over using generative AI garnered significant attention. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade 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 go viral for a reason: people agree with them.

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