{‘It demonstrates such a laziness’: the reasons I decline to date someone who uses ChatGPT|The AI Dating Dealbreaker: Why I Won’t Go Out With a ChatGPT Enthusiast.

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

I smiled tightly as this man described using generative AI for the early stages of planning the wedding. (They also employed a human wedding planner.) I responded politely. Internally, however, I decided: if my future spouse came to me with wedding ideas from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The New Relationship Non-Negotiable.

Many individuals have usual romantic dealbreakers. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, wants kids. Over the past few months, as warnings of an impending AI-induced doomsday have dominated my news feed and social conversations, I’ve developed a fresh one. I refuse to date someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program really, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the object of my disdain.)

I’ve encountered all the “what if’s”. What if I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? What if I use it to assist people? What if I only use it as a proofreading 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.

When a Simple Turn-Off Turns Into a Ethical Issue.

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

Now, in late 2025, even using ChatGPT for seemingly simple tasks like creating a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a conscious political act. We know that the power-hungry tech depletes our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is marketed as a substitute for human connection; 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 ultra-wealthy tech executives in control 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 justify the societal harm it can cause?

The Romantic Problem: If Your Date Relies on ChatGPT.

As if it had not done enough already, ChatGPT has somehow made dating even worse. A close acquaintance lately told me that she went out with a man, and in the morning proposed they get breakfast together. He pulled out his phone, opened ChatGPT, and asked 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 unmotivated they’ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot envision forming a profound, lasting connection with someone who regularly engages with a technology that’s kneecapping our collective attention spans and possibly signaling total apocalypse. Intellectual curiosity, creativity, uniqueness – I likely won’t find what I value 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.

Consider whether your dating preference genuinely fits with your long-term aims.

Ali Jackson, a dating and relationship coach located in New York, employs ChatGPT for some tasks – but she is not an evangelist. In the past six months or so, she states “every one” of her clients has approached her complaining about “chatfishing” or people who use AI to create everything on their dating apps – all the way down to the DMs they send. I asked 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 uses the tech.

“Ask yourself if your preference is truly serving your long-term 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.”

More People Voicing AI Concerns.

Other people get 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 dreams about accessing her phone settings and disabling AI features on all her apps, though tech platforms from Google to Spotify make it nearly impossible to opt out. Pereira believes that using ChatGPT “shows such a lack of initiative”.

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

A recent acquaintance’s split was particularly ugly. She sided with one of them after learning the other went to ChatGPT, a infamously awful therapy substitute, not their partner, when they wanted 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 process something and move on, which is not how things work.”

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

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and works as a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is likewise skeptical. “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 rely on it to make a grocery list. Your life is probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Celebrity and Industry Backlash.

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 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 think these quotes spread widely for a reason: people agree with them.

This sentiment exists even among those in the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely remove, comparable slop on Instagram. Sources 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 eagerly used AI in the past to write or enhance his coding.|According to Luciano Noijeen, a {lead|