{‘It demonstrates such a lack of effort’: why I decline to date someone who uses ChatGPT|The AI Romantic Dealbreaker: The Reasons I Won’t Date a ChatGPT Enthusiast.

The scene could have been taken from a Nancy Meyers film. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that smelled of discreet wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is ideal,” I remarked to the future groom. He moved closer as if revealing a secret: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

My expression was courteous as he detailed how AI tools helped in the wedding planning. (A real wedding planner was also hired.) I replied courteously. Internally, though, I decided: if my prospective spouse came to me with wedding input courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The New Relationship Non-Negotiable.

Many individuals have standard relationship non-negotiables. Doesn’t smoke, is a cat person, desires kids. Over the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced apocalypse have dominated my social media and party conversations, I’ve come up with a fresh 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 object of my disdain.)

People often ask the “what if” scenarios. Suppose I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? Imagine 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.

When a Simple Turn-Off Becomes a Moral Issue.

“Getting the ick” is what we occasionally call being turned off. Part of having an ick is not really understanding why you considered 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 automatic feeling of revulsion that had no any clear reasoning.

But here we are, in autumn 2025, and using the program even for harmless tasks such as figuring out a fitness routine or choosing what to wear feels an increasingly ethical choice. We are aware that the power-hungry tech drains our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is marketed as a placebo for human connection; lonely, detached 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 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 personal ease justify the societal harm it can cause?

How ChatGPT Ruins Dating and Connection.

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 suggested they get breakfast together. He pulled out his phone, accessed ChatGPT, and requested for restaurant suggestions. Why build a relationship with someone who delegates decisions, including the enjoyable ones like picking where to eat? If someone is so lazy 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 significant bond with a person who consistently uses a tool that erodes focus and might bring about societal collapse. Intellectual curiosity, creativity, uniqueness – I probably won’t find what I value in someone who thinks “productivity” means prompting an app to summarize a movie plot so they don’t have to spend their time, you know, watching it.

Ask yourself if your [dating] choice is truly supporting your future goals.

Ali Jackson, a romantic coach based in New York, uses ChatGPT for certain 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 generate 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 strict. 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 preference is really serving your future goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would presume that’s one of your principles, and it’s essential to find someone whose beliefs are aligned with yours.”

More Individuals Voicing AI Apprehensions.

The dislike for AI applies beyond the romantic realm. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and does 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 laziness”.

“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 especially messy. She supported one of them after discovering the other turned to ChatGPT, a infamously awful 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 deal with something and continue, which is not how things work.”

Eventually, I could not manage it on my own. I had become too dependent on AI for the routine work.

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, has similar views. “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 rely on it to make a grocery list. Your life is probably not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Well-Known Personalities and Tech Professionals Voicing Concerns.

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would “rather die” than use generative AI, it made news. Ditto for, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade against the tech warning 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 issued statements that are critical of AI in their respective industries. I believe these quotes spread widely for a reason: people sympathize with them.

This sentiment is present even among those in the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users turn off AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely remove, 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 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|