{"id":283968,"date":"2025-11-10T21:19:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T21:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/283968\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T21:19:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T21:19:09","slug":"it-shows-such-a-laziness-why-i-refuse-to-date-someone-who-uses-chatgpt-dating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/283968\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It shows such a laziness\u2019: why I refuse to date someone who uses ChatGPT | Dating"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was a setting fit for a Nancy Meyers film. We were in Oregon wine country, in a rustic-chic barn that reeked of stealth wealth, for a friend\u2019s rehearsal dinner. \u201cThis venue is perfect,\u201d I told the groom-to-be. He leaned in as if to tell me a secret: \u201cI found it on ChatGPT<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

I smiled tightly as this man described using generative AI for the initial stages of planning the wedding. (They also hired a human wedding planner.) I responded politely. Inside, however, I resolved: if my future spouse came to me with wedding input courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.<\/p>\n

Some people have the typical relationship non-negotiables. Doesn\u2019t smoke, is a cat person, wants kids. Over the past few months, as warnings of an impending AI-induced doomsday have dominated my news feed and party conversations, I\u2019ve come up with a new one. I will not date someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program really, but with 700 million weekly users<\/a>, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the object of my scorn.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve heard all the \u201cwhat ifs\u201d. What if I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? What if I use it to help people? What if I only use it as a proofreading tool \u2013 I\u2019d never use it to \u201cwrite\u201d anything. To all that I say: there are people out there for you. But I am not one of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cGetting the ick\u201d<\/a> is what we sometimes call being turned off. Part of having an ick is not really understanding why you found someone\u2019s behavior so unseemly. For instance, I once got the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. At first, my ChatGPT aversion felt like a mere ick, a kneejerk feeling of disgust that lacked any solid reasoning.<\/p>\n

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 political choice. We know that the energy-intensive tech drains our water supply<\/a> and hikes electricity bills<\/a>. It is sold as a placebo for human connection<\/a>; lonely, disconnected people finding companionship or even falling in love<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

OK, so ChatGPT helps you write your grocery list. Does your individual convenience outweigh the societal harm it can cause?<\/p>\n

As if it hadn\u2019t done enough already, ChatGPT has somehow made dating even worse. A good friend recently told me that she spent a night with a man, and in the morning suggested they get breakfast together. He took out his phone, opened ChatGPT, and asked for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who outsources decisions, including the fun ones like picking where to eat? If someone is so lazy they\u2019ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, imagine how little effort they\u2019ll spend six months in.<\/p>\n

I just cannot imagine forming a deep, lasting connection with someone who regularly interacts with a technology that\u2019s kneecapping our collective attention spans and perhaps heralding total apocalypse. Intellectual curiosity, creativity, originality \u2013 I probably won\u2019t find what I value in someone who thinks \u201cproductivity\u201d means asking an app to summarize a movie plot so they don\u2019t have to waste their time, you know, watching it.<\/p>\n

Ask yourself if your [dating] preference is truly serving your long-term goalsAli Jackson<\/p>\n

Ali Jackson, a dating and relationship coach based in New York, uses ChatGPT for some tasks \u2013 but she is not an evangelist. In the past six months or so, she says \u201cevery one\u201d of her clients has come to her complaining about \u201cchatfishing<\/a>\u201d or people who use AI to generate everything on their dating apps \u2013 all the way down to the DMs they send. I asked Jackson if my strike against ChatGPT chumps was too harsh. She said no, go forth and judge, though it might limit my dating pool \u2013 about 10% of the adult population now uses<\/a> the tech.<\/p>\n

\u201cAsk yourself if your preference is truly serving your long-term goals,\u201d Jackson said. \u201cIn your case, I would assume that\u2019s one of your values, and it\u2019s important to find someone whose values are aligned with yours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other people get the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, lives in Brooklyn and does 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 nearly impossible to opt out. Pereira thinks that using ChatGPT \u201cshows such a laziness\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like you can\u2019t think for yourself, and you have to rely on an app for that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Two of Pereira\u2019s friends recently had a messy breakup. She sided with one of them after learning the other went to ChatGPT, a notoriously awful therapy alternative<\/a>, not their partner, when they wanted to talk about their feelings. \u201cIt\u2019s like they didn\u2019t want to sit through any uncomfortable human feelings,\u201d she said. \u201cThey just wanted to process something and move on, which is not how things work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Suddenly I couldn\u2019t do it by myself. I was too reliant on AI to do the most basic things [at work]Luciano Noijeen<\/p>\n

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and works as a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is similarly weary. \u201cI don\u2019t know if I would think differently about someone who uses ChatGPT, but I would be like, \u2018come on,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cYou don\u2019t need to rely on it to make a grocery list. Your life is probably not that hard. We can make the list together.\u201d<\/p>\n

When director Guillermo del Toro said he would \u201crather die<\/a>\u201d than use generative AI, it made headlines. Ditto for SZA\u2019s Instagram stories tirade<\/a> against the tech warning about \u201cenvironmental racism\u201d and expressing fear over users who are \u201ccodependent on a machine\u201d. Ditto still for when Simu Liu<\/a>, Alison Roman<\/a>, C\u00e9line Dion<\/a>, Emily Blunt<\/a>, and others make statements that are critical of AI in their various industries. I think these quotes go viral for a reason: people agree with them.<\/p>\n

Even, to an extent, the people who power the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest added a filter that lets users turn off<\/a> AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely deactivate, similar slop on Instagram. The Information reported<\/a> that \u201ccursor resistance\u201d is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley techies won\u2019t use AI to write their code.<\/p>\n

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 punch up his coding. Over time, he found he could not code on his own. \u201cI\u2019d done it on autopilot in the past,\u201d said Noijeen, who is 27. \u201cThen suddenly I couldn\u2019t do it by myself. I was too reliant on AI to do the most basic things [at work].\u201d<\/p>\n

Noijeen stopped using AI to code, and uses it very sparingly in his personal life. He will make fun of friends who use it too much. He recently met up with an old friend who lives a three-hour train ride away. They decided to meet in the middle. The friend said he would use ChatGPT to find the right spot, but Noijeen just looked at a map. \u201cThere\u2019s a city exactly between us,\u201d he said. \u201cWhy do you need to ask ChatGPT for that?\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that I want to date a machine-smashing luddite (though I wouldn\u2019t be opposed). Naive as it may sound, I want to live a life free of ChatGPT\u2019s chokehold. I recently put this stance on a dating app profile, answering Hinge\u2019s \u201cYou should *not* go out with me if\u201d prompt with: \u201cyou use ChatGPT for literally anything.\u201d It helps get the point across.<\/p>\n