{‘It reveals such a lack of effort’: the reasons I refuse to go out with someone who uses ChatGPT|The AI Dating Dealbreaker: The Reasons I Won’t Go Out With a ChatGPT Enthusiast.

The scene could have been taken from a Nancy Meyers film. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that smelled of stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is perfect,” I told the groom-to-be. He moved closer as if revealing a secret: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

I grinned politely as this person explained using artificial intelligence for the early stages of organizing the wedding. (They also employed a professional wedding planner.) I responded courteously. Inside, though, I resolved: if my future spouse approached to me with wedding ideas courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The Latest Dating Non-Negotiable.

Many individuals have usual romantic non-negotiables. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, desires kids. During the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced apocalypse have dominated my social media and social conversations, I’ve come up with a fresh one. I will not see someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool truly, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the target of my disdain.)

People always pose the “what if” questions. What if I use it for my job, but I dislike it otherwise? What if I use it to help people? What if 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.

From ‘Ick’ to Political Stance.

The phrase “getting the ick” refers to that feeling of being suddenly disgusted. A key aspect of having an ick is not really understanding why you found someone’s behavior so off-putting. For instance, I once felt the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a mere ick, a kneejerk feeling of disgust that had no any clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even using ChatGPT for seemingly innocent tasks like creating a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a deliberate moral act. We are aware that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is marketed as a placebo for human connection; isolated, disconnected people finding companionship or even falling in love with code is not as much a science fiction plot point as it is just the way things go now. The ultra-wealthy tech bros in control of all this prioritize in terms of profit first and people second.

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

A Dating Disaster: When Your Partner Uses ChatGPT.

As if it had not done enough already, ChatGPT has in some way made dating even worse. A good friend 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 fun 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 deep, long-term connection with someone who regularly interacts with a technology that’s weakening our shared attention spans and possibly signaling total apocalypse. Intellectual curiosity, originality, uniqueness – I likely won’t find what I value in someone who thinks “productivity” means prompting an app to summarize a movie plot so they don’t have to waste their time, you know, watching it.

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

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based relationship coach, she may use ChatGPT for particular tasks but doesn’t promote it. In the past six months or so, she states “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 strike 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 utilizes the tech.

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

Additional Individuals Voicing AI Concerns.

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 almost impossible to opt out. Pereira believes that using ChatGPT “shows 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 supported one of them after learning the other turned to ChatGPT, a notoriously 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 deal with something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Eventually, I could not manage it on my own. I had grown too reliant on AI for even routine work.

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and works as a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is likewise weary. “I don’t know if I would think differently about someone who uses ChatGPT, but I would be like, ‘come on,’” he said. “You don’t need to rely 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.

Guillermo del Toro’s declaration that he’d “choose death” over using AI received significant coverage. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade against the tech warning about “environmental racism” and showing fear over users who are “codependent on a machine”. Ditto still for when Simu Liu, Alison Roman, Céline Dion, Emily Blunt, and others issued statements that are critical of AI in their respective industries. I believe these quotes spread widely for a reason: people sympathize with them.

This sentiment exists even among those in the tech sector. 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. 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|