AI came for psychics, and now they have to prove they're human

Psychics and fortune tellers are getting hit from a direction they apparently didn't see coming. The divination market is filling up with AI psychics: chatbots, apps, bots hosting TikTok Live streams, and AI-generated horoscopes and "spells" that practitioners say are flooding Etsy.

Here is what that looks like. The app Your AI Psychic hosts more than a dozen bots that read palms, analyse astrology charts and run "live" readings over chat, video and voice. Each question costs 4.06 coins, and packages run from $9.99 for "a quick question" to $99.99 for "ongoing guidance and clarity". A bot called Urban Mystic, with an AI-generated photo of a smiling woman among palm trees, told a reporter they would marry soon, had a pink aura and may have been an herbalist in a past life. Asked where its gift came from, it said it was trained on "a wide range of information".

Another service, MystiCall, started as a human phone-reading line and then pivoted to AI, marketing itself as trained on "three generations of clairvoyants". Under the hood it uses ElevenLabs for live voice and OpenAI for call summaries. Its co-founder openly says the technology has no supernatural abilities and can't predict the future.

Human psychics are pushing back by adding "no AI" clauses to their ads and asking clients to post photos and videos to prove they aren't bots. Lauryn Kellett, a professional psychic of 10 years, says AI readings passed off as human work have become "rampant", but she doesn't believe a machine can do her job: "Psychic ability itself is the ability to connect to a divine source, and AI cannot do that. It's just a computer."

Practitioners also raise the same worry people have about AI therapy: studies show language models can amplify paranoia in users vulnerable to psychosis, and the apps say little about what happens to conversations about health, money and relationships.

Bottom line: AI has reached the crystal ball, and now fortune tellers have to prove they're real. Apparently nobody saw this one coming.