{‘It shows such a laziness’: the reasons I decline to date someone who uses ChatGPT|The AI Romantic Dealbreaker: The Reasons I Refuse to Date a ChatGPT Enthusiast.

The scene could have been pulled from a Nancy Meyers film. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that smelled of stealth wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is ideal,” I remarked to the future groom. He moved closer as if sharing a confidential detail: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

I smiled politely as this man explained using generative AI for the initial stages of organizing the wedding. (They also employed a human wedding planner.) I replied politely. Inside, though, I decided: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Modern Romantic Dealbreakers: Artificial Intelligence Usage.

Many individuals have usual relationship non-negotiables. Doesn’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. During the past few months, as alarms of an approaching AI-induced apocalypse have flooded my social media and social conversations, I’ve developed a fresh one. I will not see someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program truly, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the object of my scorn.)

I’ve heard all the “what if’s”. What if I use it for my job, but I dislike 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.

How a Simple ‘Ick’ Turns Into a Ethical Issue.

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 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.

But here we are, in autumn 2025, and using the program even for harmless tasks such as figuring out a fitness routine or choosing what to wear feels an increasingly ethical choice. We are aware that the power-hungry tech drains our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is marketed as a substitute for real relationships; lonely, detached people discovering companionship or even falling in love with code is not as much a sci-fi plot point as it is just the way things go now. The megarich tech bros 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 advantage offset the collective damage it causes?

The Romantic Disaster: 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 recently told me that she spent a night with a man, and in the morning suggested they get breakfast together. He took out his phone, opened ChatGPT, and requested for restaurant suggestions. Why build a relationship with someone who outsources decisions, including the enjoyable ones like choosing where to eat? If someone is so lazy they’ll consult ChatGPT to plan a first date, imagine how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s difficult to see myself establishing a significant relationship with a person who consistently uses a tool that erodes focus and might lead to societal collapse. Inquisitiveness, originality, uniqueness – I probably won’t find what I prize in someone who thinks “productivity” means asking an app to summarize a movie plot so they don’t have to spend their time, you know, watching it.

Consider whether your dating criterion actually fits with your long-term objectives.

Ali Jackson, a dating and relationship coach based in New York, uses ChatGPT for some tasks – but she is not an advocate. In the past six months or so, she says “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 strike against ChatGPT users was too strict. She said no, go forth 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 really serving your future 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.”

Additional People Expressing ChatGPT Apprehensions.

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 various live music venues across the city. She dreams 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 believes that using ChatGPT “shows such a laziness”.

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

A recent acquaintance’s breakup was particularly messy. She sided with one of them after learning the other went to ChatGPT, a infamously poor therapy alternative, not their partner, when they wanted to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they didn’t want to sit through any difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Suddenly I couldn’t do it by myself. I was too dependent on AI to do the most basic things [at work].

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and is a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is likewise skeptical. “I am not sure 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 likely not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Well-Known Personalities and Tech Professionals Speaking Out.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “rather die” than use AI tools, it made news. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade against the tech warning 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 critical 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 power the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely deactivate, comparable slop on Instagram. Reports 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 enhance his coding.|According to Luciano Noijeen, a {lead|