This article explicitly points out modern alternatives to PGP's clunky, 1990s implementation of asymmetric encryption.

But, tangentially, it's a bad idea to use asymmetric encryption when you don't absolutely need it. Modern symmetric AEAD ciphers, which are implicated in pretty much all serious public-key designs anyways, are safer to use that asymmetric cryptography.

Seeing a public key in a design that doesn't demand public keys is a cryptographic engineering code smell.