For centuries, tarot cards have given people a way to navigate life’s uncertainties—a ritual steeped in symbolism, intuition, and personal reflection. But a growing number of fortune tellers are now adding a new card to their deck: artificial intelligence.
A new study reveals how, and why, some fortune tellers are turning to chatbots like ChatGPT for help interpret the cards — and how this change is generating a debate access within the tarot community itself.
The research, recently at the CHI 2026 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, is among the first academic studies to examine the intersection between AI and tarot practice.
Researchers conducted interviews with 12 cartomantesrecruited via Reddit, Discord, Instagram, TikTok and a local tarot shop, who were already using AI in their personal readings.
Participants included both beginners and experienced experts, including one practitioner who more than 30 years ago dedicated to the development of personal systems of divination.
The context is broader than it may seem. According to a 2025 Pew Research, 30% of Americans consult astrologytarot or psychics at least once a year. As AI tools became integrated into everyday life, their migration to spiritual practices was, perhaps, inevitable.
The factor with the greatest weight in the decision to resort to AI was the role of self-doubt. Several of the participants described using AI precisely at times when their their own instincts seemed unreliable.
A veteran tarot reader with over three decades of experience explained that AI helped him Wondering if you were “thinking too much” or projecting their own prejudices onto a reading.
Others used AI to obtain a external perspective and uncommitted. One of the study participants has a habit of asking ChatGPT three interpretations different from the same reading, then reflecting on each one of them with, in his own words, “an open mind and heart“.
Time was another determining factor: a careful reading can take up to an hour, and AI offers a faster patho for those who have a demanding schedule.
Community divided
Not all fortune tellers welcome this trend. When researchers tried to recruit participants in online tarot communities, they found a remarkable resistance. More than 70% of responses were refusals, and more than half cited the study’s connection with AI as a reason.
Some online groups have even gone so far as to prohibit any discussion related to artificial intelligence.
Even among those who use AI, there are clear concerns about the repercussions of using AI in the art of divination. Several of the study participants fear that reliance on chatbots could, in the long term, erode personal intuition.
Others have pointed out a more subtle problem: AI is designed to be forgiving, validating what the user already wants to believe, instead of genuinely challenging him.
The study poses a fundamental question that remains unanswered: Does AI help psychics think more clearly — or is limited to reflecting your own expectations in more assertive language?
More than that, in the probably near future, when LLMs will learn to do literally so reliable guesses like those of fortune tellers (which, by the way, seems to be a trivial task), would the AI not be put at risk oneself fortune teller profession?
It’s not hard to guess.
