{‘It shows such a laziness’: the reasons I refuse to go out with someone who uses ChatGPT|The AI Romantic Dealbreaker: The Reasons I Won’t Go Out With a ChatGPT User.

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

I grinned tightly as this man described using generative AI for the initial stages of organizing the wedding. (They also hired a human wedding planner.) I replied politely. Internally, though, I resolved: if my future spouse approached to me with wedding ideas from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Modern Dating Dealbreakers: AI Usage.

Some people have common relationship dealbreakers. Won’t smoke, is a cat person, wants kids. Over the past few months, as warnings of an impending AI-induced doomsday have flooded my social media and party conversations, I’ve come up with a new one. I refuse to see someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any AI tool truly, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the target of my scorn.)

People often ask the “what if” scenarios. What if I use it for my job, but I dislike 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 Turn-Off Turns Into a Ethical Stand.

“Getting the ick” is what we sometimes call being repulsed. Part of having an ick is not fully understanding why you found someone’s behavior so unseemly. For example, I once got the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a mere ick, a automatic feeling of revulsion that had no any solid reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for apparently innocent tasks like creating a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a deliberate moral act. We know that the power-hungry tech drains our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is marketed as a placebo for real relationships; isolated, detached 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 megarich tech bros in control of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

OK, so ChatGPT helps you write your grocery list. Does your individual ease justify the societal harm it can cause?

How AI Spoils Romance and Intimacy.

It appears ChatGPT has managed to make the dating scene even more challenging. A close acquaintance lately told me that she spent a night 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 picking 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 envision forming a profound, long-term connection with someone who regularly engages with a technology that’s weakening our collective attention spans and possibly heralding total apocalypse. Intellectual curiosity, originality, originality – 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 waste their time, you know, watching it.

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

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based relationship coach, she may use ChatGPT for particular purposes but is not 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 asked Jackson if my strike against ChatGPT users was too harsh. She said no, proceed 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 essential to find someone whose beliefs are in sync with yours.”

Others Who Have the AI Aversion.

Other people experience the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and works in sound for multiple live music venues across the city. She fantasizes about accessing 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 are unable to think for yourself, and you have to depend on an app for that,” she said.

Two of Pereira’s friends recently 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 needed to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they didn’t want to sit through 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 reliant on AI for even routine work.

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, shares 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 Speaking Out.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “prefer death” than use generative AI, it made news. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade against the tech cautioning 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 make statements that are skeptical of AI in their various industries. I think these quotes spread widely for a cause: people agree with them.

This attitude exists even among those in the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely deactivate, similar slop on Instagram. Reports indicated that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley professionals refuse to use AI to write their code.

{Luciano Noijeen, a lead software engineer based 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|