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It felt like a scene straight from a Nancy Meyers movie. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that reeked of stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is perfect,” I told the groom-to-be. He leaned in as if revealing a secret: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

My expression was polite as he outlined how AI tools assisted in the wedding planning. (A human wedding planner was eventually hired.) I replied politely. Inside, though, I decided: if my future spouse came to me with wedding input from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The Latest Dating Dealbreaker.

Some people have typical relationship dealbreakers. Doesn’t smoke, is a cat person, desires kids. During the past few months, as warnings of an impending 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 generative AI program really, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the object of my scorn.)

I’ve encountered all the “what if’s”. Suppose I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? Imagine if I use it to assist 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 people out there for you. But I am not one of them.

From Disgust to Political Position.

The phrase “getting the ick” refers to that feeling of being unexpectedly turned off. Part of having an ick is not really 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 dislike felt like a simple ick, a automatic feeling of revulsion that lacked any solid reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for seemingly simple tasks like designing a workout plan or selecting an outfit feels like a conscious moral decision. We know that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is sold as a placebo for real relationships; isolated, disconnected people discovering 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 charge of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

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

A Dating Disaster: If Your Date Relies on ChatGPT.

It seems ChatGPT has found a way to make the romantic scene even more challenging. A good friend recently 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 asked for restaurant suggestions. Why build a relationship with someone who delegates 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, consider how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s difficult to picture myself building a meaningful relationship with a person who often uses a tool that diminishes focus and might bring about societal collapse. Intellectual curiosity, creativity, originality – I likely won’t find what I prize in someone who thinks “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 romantic coach based in New York, employs ChatGPT for some tasks – but she is not an advocate. 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 inquired 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 uses the tech.

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

Others Who Have the AI Ick.

Other people experience the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and works in sound for multiple 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 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 rely on an app for that,” she said.

A recent acquaintance’s split was particularly ugly. She sided with one of them after learning the other turned 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 deal with something and continue, which is not how things work.”

Suddenly I couldn’t do it by myself. I was too dependent on AI to do the simplest things [at work].

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, has similar sentiments. “I am not sure if I would think otherwise about someone who uses ChatGPT, but I would be like, ‘come on,’” he said. “You don’t need to depend on it to make a grocery list. Your life is likely not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Public Figures and Silicon Valley Professionals Speaking Out.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “prefer death” than use AI tools, it made news. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories rant against the tech warning 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 issued statements that are skeptical of AI in their various industries. I think these quotes go viral for a cause: people agree with them.

This attitude is present even among those in the tech sector. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely remove, comparable content on Instagram. Sources suggested that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley techies won’t use AI to write their code.

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