(RNS) — A woman in Greece files for divorce after an AI chatbot reads signs of infidelity in her coffee grounds. A business owner in China types her birth date and location into Chinese artificial intelligence sensation DeepSeek to glean astrological advice on a recent career change. Millennials in Thailand share advice on how to upload pictures of their palms for ChatGPT to read.
In between writing emails, generating grocery lists and summarizing books, AI large language models have found a new use: fortune telling.
Tech tools for religion and spirituality aren’t anything new. Apps track Muslims’ Ramadan fasts, tell Jews if a dish is kosher, furnish Bible quotes of the day or guide a meditation session. Co–Star, an astrology social network app launched in 2017, had 30 million registered users as of July 2023.
Even digital divination isn’t new: Online wheels of fortune will answer your yes/no questions, and on Etsy, a witch will deliver predictions via email or DMs.
What is new is the boom in access to AI for the average user. According to the Pew Research Center, 57% of U.S. adults interact with artificial intelligence at least several times a week, and the use of ChatGPT has increased from 18% of U.S. adults to 23% from July 2023 to March 2024. The largest increase was seen among younger adults, with 43% of adults under 30 saying they have used ChatGPT.
With the proliferation of AI tools for everything from transcription to customer service, it seems inevitable that AI would be used for spiritual tools as well. AI-powered apps such as Seance AI use the technology to give users the feeling of talking to departed loved ones, SeventhSight interprets dreams, while BeautifulSouls offers spiritual guidance from AI “counselors.”
SeventhSight uses AI to interpret dreams. (Screen grab)
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