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The setting could have been taken from a Nancy Meyers film. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that smelled of discreet wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is ideal,” I remarked to the future groom. He moved closer as if revealing a secret: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

My smile was polite as he outlined how AI tools helped in the wedding preparations. (A real wedding planner was eventually brought in.) I replied politely. Internally, however, I resolved: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding input from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Modern Romantic Red Flags: Artificial Intelligence Use.

Some people have typical relationship non-negotiables. Doesn’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. Over 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 refuse to see someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool truly, 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 hate it otherwise? Imagine if I use it to assist people? How about I only use it as a editing tool – I’d never use it to “write” anything. To all that I respond: there are individuals out there for you. But I am not one of them.

From Disgust to Ethical Stance.

The phrase “getting the ick” describes that feeling of being unexpectedly turned off. A key aspect of having an ick is not fully understanding why you found someone’s behavior so unseemly. For example, 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 disgust that lacked any solid reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for seemingly simple tasks like creating a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a conscious political act. We are aware that the energy-intensive tech drains our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is sold as a substitute for real relationships; isolated, detached people discovering companionship or even falling in love with code is not as much a sci-fi 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 wider damage it causes?

A Dating Disaster: If Your Partner Uses ChatGPT.

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 proposed they get breakfast together. He pulled out his phone, opened 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 hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s difficult to see myself building a significant relationship with a person who often uses a tool that erodes concentration and might bring about societal collapse. Inquisitiveness, creativity, uniqueness – I probably won’t find what I prize in someone who believes “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] choice is really supporting your long-term goals.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based relationship coach, she does use ChatGPT for specific tasks but doesn’t promote it. In the past six months or so, she says “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 users was too strict. She said no, go forth and judge, though it might reduce my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now uses the tech.

“Ask yourself if your preference 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 beliefs are aligned with yours.”

Others Who Have the AI Ick.

Other people get 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 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 laziness”.

“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 learning the other went to ChatGPT, a notoriously poor therapy substitute, not their partner, when they needed to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they refused to sit through any difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to deal with something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Suddenly I was unable to do it by myself. I was too reliant on AI to do the simplest things [at work].

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and is a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is likewise skeptical. “I don’t know 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 probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Public Figures and Tech Professionals Voicing Concerns.

Guillermo del Toro’s statement that he’d “rather die” over using generative AI received significant coverage. 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 think these quotes go viral for a reason: people agree with them.

This sentiment is present even among those in the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users turn off AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely deactivate, comparable slop 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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