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It was a scene straight from a Nancy Meyers film. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that smelled of discreet wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is ideal,” I told the groom-to-be. He moved closer as if sharing a confidential detail: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

I smiled tightly as this person described using artificial intelligence for the early stages of planning the wedding. (They also employed a human wedding planner.) I replied politely. Inside, though, I resolved: if my future spouse approached to me with wedding ideas from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The Latest Relationship Non-Negotiable.

Some people have typical relationship non-negotiables. Doesn’t smoke, is a cat person, wants kids. During the past few months, as alarms of an approaching AI-induced doomsday have flooded my news feed and social conversations, I’ve come up with a new one. I will not see someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool really, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the object of my scorn.)

People always pose the “what if” scenarios. Suppose I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? What if I use it to assist people? What if I only use it as a editing 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 Ethical Position.

The term “getting the ick” refers to that feeling of being suddenly disgusted. A key aspect of having an ick is not really understanding why you found someone’s behavior so off-putting. For instance, I once got the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a simple ick, a automatic feeling of disgust that lacked any solid reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for seemingly innocent tasks like designing a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a deliberate political act. We know that the energy-intensive tech depletes our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is sold as a placebo for real relationships; lonely, detached 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 executives in charge of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

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

A Dating Problem: When Your Date Uses ChatGPT.

As if it hadn’t done enough already, ChatGPT has in some way 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 requested for restaurant suggestions. Why build a relationship with someone who delegates 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 establishing a meaningful relationship with a person who consistently uses a tool that diminishes concentration and might lead to societal collapse. Inquisitiveness, originality, originality – I probably won’t find what I prize in someone who thinks “productivity” means prompting an app to summarize a movie plot so they don’t have to waste their time, you know, watching it.

Ask yourself if your [dating] preference is really serving your future goals.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based relationship coach, she does use ChatGPT for particular tasks but is not promote it. 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 inquired Jackson if my rule against ChatGPT chumps was too harsh. She said no, proceed and evaluate, though it might reduce my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now uses the tech.

“Ask yourself if your choice is truly serving your long-term goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would presume that’s one of your values, and it’s important to find someone whose values are in sync with yours.”

Others Who Have the ChatGPT Aversion.

The aversion for AI extends beyond the dating sphere. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and does sound for various 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 thinks that using ChatGPT “demonstrates such a lack of initiative”.

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

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

Eventually, I could not handle it on my own. I had become too reliant on AI for even routine work.

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and is a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is likewise weary. “I don’t know if I would think differently 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.”

Well-Known Figures and Silicon Valley Insiders Speaking Out.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “prefer death” than use AI tools, it made news. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade against the tech warning 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 issued statements that are critical of AI in their various industries. I believe these quotes spread widely for a reason: people agree with them.

This attitude is present 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 remove, similar slop on Instagram. Sources 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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