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

It felt like a scene lifted from a Nancy Meyers film. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a stylishly rustic barn that smelled of discreet wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is perfect,” I remarked to the future groom. He moved closer as if revealing a confidential detail: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

My expression was polite as he detailed how generative AI assisted in the wedding planning. (A real wedding planner was eventually brought in.) I replied politely. Inside, however, I decided: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding ideas from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Contemporary Romantic Dealbreakers: Artificial Intelligence Usage.

Many individuals have usual relationship non-negotiables. Doesn’t smoke, is a cat person, wants kids. During the past few months, as warnings of an impending AI-induced apocalypse have dominated my social media and party conversations, I’ve developed a new one. I will not date someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program really, but with 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the target of my disdain.)

People always ask the “what if” scenarios. Suppose I use it for my job, but I dislike it otherwise? Imagine 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 respond: there are individuals 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 considered someone’s behavior so off-putting. For example, I once got 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 had no any clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for apparently simple tasks like designing a workout plan or selecting an outfit feels like a deliberate moral act. We are aware that the energy-intensive tech drains our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is marketed as a substitute for human connection; isolated, disconnected people discovering companionship or even developing feelings with code is not as much a sci-fi scenario 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.

Sure, ChatGPT can create your shopping list. But does that personal benefit offset the wider damage it causes?

A Romantic Problem: If Your Partner Relies on ChatGPT.

As if it had not done enough already, ChatGPT has in some way made dating even worse. A close acquaintance recently told me that she spent a night with a man, and in the morning proposed they get breakfast together. He took out his phone, opened ChatGPT, and requested for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who outsources decisions, including the enjoyable ones like picking where to eat? If someone is so lazy they’ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s hard to see myself building a significant bond with a person who often uses a tool that erodes concentration and might lead to societal collapse. Inquisitiveness, 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 spend their time, you know, watching it.

Consider whether your dating criterion actually fits with your life objectives.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based relationship coach, she does use ChatGPT for specific purposes but doesn’t endorse it. In the past six months or so, she says “every one” of her clients has approached her complaining 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 rule 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 utilizes the tech.

“Ask yourself if your preference is really serving your long-term goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would assume that’s one of your values, and it’s essential to find someone whose beliefs are aligned with yours.”

Others Who Share the ChatGPT 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 various 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 “demonstrates such a laziness”.

“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 sided with one of them after learning the other went to ChatGPT, a infamously poor therapy alternative, not their partner, when they wanted to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they refused to sit through any difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Suddenly I was unable to do it by myself. I was too reliant on AI to do the most basic things [at work].

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 otherwise about someone who uses ChatGPT, but I would be like, ‘come on,’” he said. “You don’t need to depend on it to make a grocery list. Your life is likely not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Public Figures and Tech Insiders Voicing Concerns.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “prefer death” than use generative AI, it made headlines. Ditto for, 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 sympathize with them.

Even, to an degree, the people who power the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely remove, comparable slop on Instagram. Sources suggested that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley professionals won’t 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|