{‘It demonstrates such a lack of effort’: why I decline to go out with someone who relies on ChatGPT|The AI Romantic Dealbreaker: The Reasons I Refuse to Go Out With a ChatGPT Enthusiast.

It was a scene lifted 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 location is ideal,” I remarked to the future groom. He moved closer as if sharing a confidential detail: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

My smile was polite as he outlined how generative AI assisted in the wedding preparations. (A real wedding planner was eventually brought in.) I responded courteously. Internally, however, I resolved: if my future spouse approached to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Modern Dating Red Flags: AI Use.

Many individuals have standard relationship non-negotiables. Won’t smoke, is a cat person, wants kids. Over the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced apocalypse have flooded my social media and social conversations, I’ve come up with a new one. I refuse to see 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. Suppose I use it for my job, but I dislike it otherwise? What if I use it to help people? How about I only use it as a proofreading 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.

How a Minor Turn-Off Becomes a Moral Stand.

“Getting the ick” is what we sometimes call being turned off. Part of having an ick is not fully understanding why you considered 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 disgust that lacked any clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for apparently innocent tasks like designing a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a deliberate moral decision. We know that the power-hungry tech drains our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is marketed as a substitute for human connection; lonely, detached people finding 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 control of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

Sure, ChatGPT can create your shopping list. But does that individual benefit excuse the collective damage it creates?

How ChatGPT Ruins Dating and Intimacy.

It appears ChatGPT has found a way to make the dating scene even more challenging. A close acquaintance recently told me that she went out with a man, and in the morning suggested they get breakfast together. He took out his phone, accessed ChatGPT, and requested for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who delegates decisions, including the enjoyable ones like picking where to eat? If someone is so unmotivated they’ll consult ChatGPT to plan a first date, imagine how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot imagine forming a profound, lasting connection with someone who frequently interacts with a technology that’s kneecapping our collective attention spans and possibly heralding total apocalypse. Inquisitiveness, originality, originality – I probably won’t find what I value in someone who thinks “productivity” means asking an app to recap a movie plot so they don’t have to waste their time, you know, watching it.

Consider whether your dating criterion actually aligns with your long-term aims.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she does use ChatGPT for particular tasks but is not promote it. In the past six months or so, she says “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 asked Jackson if my rule against ChatGPT users was too harsh. She said no, go forth and evaluate, though it might limit my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now utilizes the tech.

“Ask yourself if your choice 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 in sync with yours.”

More People Expressing ChatGPT Concerns.

Other people get the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and does sound for various 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 disable. Pereira believes that using ChatGPT “demonstrates such a laziness”.

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

Two of Pereira’s friends recently had a complicated breakup. She supported one of them after discovering 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.”

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, shares similar views. “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 depend on it to make a grocery list. Your life is probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Celebrity and Tech Backlash.

Guillermo del Toro’s statement that he’d “rather die” over using generative AI garnered significant attention. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories rant against the tech cautioning about “environmental racism” and expressing 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 skeptical of AI in their respective industries. I believe these quotes go viral for a cause: people agree with them.

This sentiment exists 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 remove, similar content on Instagram. Sources indicated that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley techies refuse to use AI to write their code.

{Luciano Noijeen, a lead software engineer based in Greece and the Netherlands, told me that he enthusiastically used AI in the past to write or punch up his coding.|According to Luciano Noijeen, a {lead|