{‘It shows such a laziness’: the reasons I decline to date someone who relies on ChatGPT|The AI Romantic Dealbreaker: Why I Won’t Go Out With a ChatGPT Enthusiast.

It was a moment straight from a Nancy Meyers film. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that smelled of stealth wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is perfect,” I remarked to the future groom. He leaned in as if sharing a secret: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

My smile was courteous as he outlined how AI tools assisted in the wedding planning. (A real wedding planner was eventually hired.) I responded politely. Inside, though, I decided: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The New Relationship Non-Negotiable.

Some people have common relationship dealbreakers. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. Over the past few months, as alarms of an approaching AI-induced doomsday have dominated my social media and party conversations, I’ve come up with a fresh one. I refuse to see someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool really, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the object of my disdain.)

I’ve encountered all the “what if’s”. Suppose I use it for my job, but I dislike it otherwise? Imagine if I use it to assist people? What if 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.

When a Simple Turn-Off Turns Into a Moral Stand.

The term “getting the ick” refers to that sensation of being unexpectedly turned off. A key aspect of having an ick is not fully understanding why you considered someone’s behavior so off-putting. For example, I once got the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a simple ick, a kneejerk feeling of revulsion that lacked any clear reasoning.

But here we are, in autumn 2025, and using the program even for harmless tasks such as planning a fitness routine or choosing what to wear feels an more and more ethical choice. We know that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is sold as a substitute for real relationships; isolated, disconnected 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 ultra-wealthy tech executives in charge of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

Sure, ChatGPT can generate your shopping list. But does that personal benefit offset the wider negative impact it creates?

How ChatGPT Spoils Romance and Connection.

As if it had not 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 suggested they get breakfast together. He took out his phone, accessed 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 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 significant relationship with a person who consistently uses a tool that erodes focus and might lead to societal collapse. Inquisitiveness, creativity, originality – I likely won’t find what I value 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.

Ask yourself if your [dating] choice is truly supporting your long-term goals.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she does use ChatGPT for particular purposes but doesn’t endorse 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 generate everything on their dating apps – all the way down to the DMs they send. I asked Jackson if my rule against ChatGPT chumps was too strict. She said no, go forth and evaluate, though it might limit my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now uses the tech.

“Ask yourself if your choice is really supporting your long-term 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.”

Additional Individuals Expressing AI Apprehensions.

The aversion for AI applies beyond the romantic sphere. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and does sound for multiple live music venues across the city. She fantasizes about accessing her phone settings and deactivating 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.

Two of Pereira’s friends recently had a complicated breakup. She sided with one of them after discovering the other turned to ChatGPT, a notoriously awful therapy substitute, not their partner, when they needed to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they didn’t want to endure any uncomfortable 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 grown too dependent on AI for the routine tasks.

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and is a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is likewise weary. “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 Industry Backlash.

Guillermo del Toro’s statement that he’d “rather die” over using AI garnered significant coverage. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories rant 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 skeptical of AI in their respective industries. I think these quotes go viral for a cause: people agree with them.

Even, to an extent, the people who run the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users turn off AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely remove, similar slop on Instagram. Reports suggested that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley techies won’t use AI to write their code.

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