{‘It reveals such a lack of effort’: why I refuse to date someone who relies on ChatGPT|The AI Romantic Dealbreaker: The Reasons I Refuse to Go Out With a ChatGPT User.

The setting could have been pulled from a Nancy Meyers production. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that smelled of discreet wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is perfect,” I remarked to the future groom. He leaned in as if sharing a secret: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

I smiled tightly as this person explained using generative AI for the early stages of organizing the wedding. (They also hired a professional wedding planner.) I replied courteously. 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 typical relationship dealbreakers. Doesn’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. Over the past few months, as warnings of an approaching AI-induced doomsday have dominated my news feed and social conversations, I’ve developed a new one. I refuse to see someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool truly, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the object of my disdain.)

People always pose the “what if” scenarios. What if I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? Imagine if I use it to help 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 people out there for you. But I am not one of them.

When a Minor ‘Ick’ Becomes a Moral Stand.

“Getting the ick” is what we occasionally call being turned off. A key aspect of having an ick is not really understanding why you found 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 dislike felt like a simple ick, a automatic feeling of revulsion that had no any clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even using ChatGPT for seemingly innocent tasks like designing a workout plan or selecting an outfit feels like a deliberate moral act. We know that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is sold as a placebo for human connection; isolated, detached people finding 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 executives in control of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

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

How ChatGPT Ruins Dating and Intimacy.

As if it had not done enough already, ChatGPT has in some way 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 took 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 consult ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot imagine forming a profound, long-term connection with someone who frequently engages with a technology that’s weakening our shared attention spans and perhaps signaling total apocalypse. Inquisitiveness, originality, originality – I probably won’t find what I value in someone who believes “productivity” means prompting an app to recap a movie plot so they don’t have to waste their time, you know, watching it.

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

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based relationship coach, she may use ChatGPT for particular tasks but doesn’t endorse 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 inquired Jackson if my rule against ChatGPT users was too harsh. She said no, proceed and evaluate, though it might reduce my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now utilizes the tech.

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

Others Who Share the AI Aversion.

Other people get the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and does sound for multiple live music venues across the city. She fantasizes about going into 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 “demonstrates such a lack of initiative”.

“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 lately had a messy breakup. She supported one of them after learning the other went to ChatGPT, a notoriously awful therapy alternative, not their partner, when they wanted to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they didn’t want to endure any difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Before long, I found not manage it on my own. I had become too dependent on AI for even basic work.

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

Public Personalities and Silicon Valley Insiders Voicing Concerns.

Guillermo del Toro’s statement that he’d “choose death” over using generative AI received significant attention. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories rant against the tech cautioning about “environmental racism” and showing 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 believe these quotes spread widely for a reason: people sympathize with them.

Even, to an degree, the people who run the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users turn off AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely remove, comparable 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 working in Greece and the Netherlands, told me that he eagerly used AI in the past to write or punch up his coding.|According to Luciano Noijeen, a {lead|