{‘It demonstrates such a laziness’: why I refuse to go out with someone who relies on ChatGPT|The AI Romantic Dealbreaker: The Reasons I Refuse to Date a ChatGPT User.

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 discreet wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is ideal,” I remarked to the future groom. He moved closer as if revealing a confidential detail: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

My smile was polite as he detailed how AI tools helped in the wedding planning. (A real wedding planner was eventually hired.) I replied courteously. Inside, however, I decided: if my future spouse approached to me with wedding ideas from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The New Relationship Dealbreaker.

Some people have common relationship dealbreakers. Won’t smoke, is a cat person, wants kids. During the past few months, as warnings of an impending AI-induced doomsday have dominated my news feed and party conversations, I’ve developed a fresh one. I will not date 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 disdain.)

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 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 Disgust to Ethical Position.

“Getting the ick” is what we occasionally call being turned off. A key aspect of having an ick is not fully understanding why you found someone’s behavior so unseemly. For example, I once felt the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. At first, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a simple ick, a kneejerk feeling of disgust that lacked any solid reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for seemingly simple tasks like creating 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 hikes electricity bills. It is sold as a placebo for real relationships; isolated, detached people finding 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 executives in charge of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

OK, so ChatGPT assists you write your grocery list. Does your individual convenience outweigh the broader harm it can cause?

A Dating Problem: If Your Partner Uses ChatGPT.

It seems ChatGPT has managed to make the dating scene even more challenging. A close acquaintance recently told me that she spent a night with a man, and in the morning suggested they get breakfast together. He pulled out his phone, opened ChatGPT, and requested for restaurant suggestions. Why build a relationship with someone who delegates decisions, including the fun ones like choosing where to eat? If someone is so lazy they’ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, imagine how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

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

Reflect on whether your dating preference genuinely aligns with your life aims.

Ali Jackson, a romantic coach based in New York, uses ChatGPT for some tasks – but she is not an evangelist. In the past six months or so, she says “every one” of her clients has approached her expressing concern about “chatfishing” or people who use AI to create 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, proceed 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 supporting your future goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would presume that’s one of your principles, and it’s important to find someone whose beliefs are in sync with yours.”

Others Who Have the AI Ick.

Other people experience the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, lives 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 thinks that using ChatGPT “shows such a lack of initiative”.

“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 poor therapy substitute, not their partner, when they needed to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they refused 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 found not handle it on my own. I had become too dependent on AI for the basic work.

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, has similar sentiments. “I don’t know 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 likely not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Celebrity and Tech Backlash.

Guillermo del Toro’s declaration that he’d “rather die” over using generative AI garnered significant coverage. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade against the tech warning 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 critical of AI in their respective industries. I believe these quotes spread widely for a cause: people agree with them.

This sentiment is present even among those in the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest introduced 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 refuse to use AI to write their code.

{Luciano Noijeen, a lead software engineer based 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|