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

The scene could have been pulled from a Nancy Meyers production. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that reeked of discreet wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is perfect,” I told the future groom. He leaned in as if sharing a confidential detail: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

I grinned politely as this person described using artificial intelligence for the early stages of planning the wedding. (They also employed a professional wedding planner.) I responded courteously. Internally, however, I resolved: if my prospective spouse approached to me with wedding ideas from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Contemporary Dating Red Flags: Artificial Intelligence Use.

Some people have typical relationship dealbreakers. Won’t smoke, prefers cat person, wants kids. Over the past few months, as warnings of an approaching AI-induced apocalypse have dominated my news feed and social conversations, I’ve developed a new one. I will not date someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program 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” scenarios. Suppose 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 respond: there are individuals out there for you. But I am not one of them.

How a Simple ‘Ick’ Becomes a Ethical Stand.

The phrase “getting the ick” describes that feeling of being suddenly turned off. Part of having an ick is not fully understanding why you found someone’s behavior so off-putting. For example, I once felt the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. Initially, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a simple ick, a kneejerk feeling of revulsion that lacked any solid reasoning.

But here we are, in fall 2025, and using the program even for benign tasks such as figuring out a fitness routine or deciding what to wear feels an increasingly ethical choice. We know that the power-hungry tech drains our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is sold as a substitute 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 bros in charge of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

Sure, ChatGPT can create your shopping list. But does that individual benefit offset the collective negative impact it causes?

The Romantic Disaster: When Your Partner Uses ChatGPT.

It appears ChatGPT has managed to make the romantic scene even more challenging. A good friend recently told me that she went out with a man, and in the morning proposed 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 enjoyable ones like picking where to eat? If someone is so unmotivated they’ll consult ChatGPT to plan a first date, imagine how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s hard to see myself establishing a meaningful relationship with a person who often uses a tool that erodes focus and might bring about societal collapse. Intellectual curiosity, originality, uniqueness – I probably won’t find what I prize in someone who believes “productivity” means asking an app to recap a movie plot so they don’t have to spend their time, you know, watching it.

Reflect on whether your dating criterion actually aligns with your long-term objectives.

Ali Jackson, a romantic coach located in New York, uses ChatGPT for certain tasks – but she is not an advocate. 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 asked Jackson if my strike against ChatGPT users was too harsh. 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 preference 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 beliefs are in sync with yours.”

Others Who Have the ChatGPT Ick.

Other people get the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and does sound for various 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 almost impossible to opt out. Pereira believes that using ChatGPT “demonstrates 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 lately had a messy breakup. She supported one of them after learning the other went to ChatGPT, a notoriously poor therapy substitute, not their partner, when they wanted to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they didn’t want to endure any difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to deal with something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Before long, I found not manage it on my own. I had grown too dependent on AI for even routine tasks.

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and is 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 probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Well-Known Figures and Tech Professionals Voicing Concerns.

Guillermo del Toro’s statement that he’d “rather die” over using AI garnered significant coverage. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade against the tech cautioning about “environmental racism” and showing fear over users who are “codependent on a machine”. The same goes for when Simu Liu, Alison Roman, Céline Dion, Emily Blunt, and others issued statements that are critical 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 mute, but not entirely deactivate, comparable content on Instagram. Sources 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 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|