Teenagers applying for college have to juggle an anxiety-inducing load of deadlines, transcripts, and personal statements. But when 19-year-old Juliet Zou plugged the date, time, and location of her birth into ChatGPT, she wasn’t trying to get the chatbot to write an essay about “facing adversity” or “gratitude.”

Instead, the Palo Alto native was using a new tool for an ancient practice: divination. Schools, like people, carry their own elemental signatures. Maybe “Chat” could read it.

“I wanted some confirmation to make me feel this school was the right choice,” Zou said of her top pick, Wellesley College in Massachusetts. ChatGPT gave her the reassurance she was looking for, and she committed. She just finished her first year. 

Across TikTok, Reddit, and Threads, (opens in new tab)emerging communities of young seekers (opens in new tab) have formed around the use of AI for fortune-telling, and some chatbots now have tarot integrations built in (opens in new tab). (opens in new tab)iJaadee (opens in new tab), a personal astrologer to celebrities like SZA, has begun (opens in new tab)generating AI readings (opens in new tab) for clients. Simultaneously, AI and its impact on early-career employment (opens in new tab) have created a pervading sense of unease. The irony is not lost on these young people that the same technology gutting entry-level job prospects is now the thing they are asking to make sense of it all.

“You’re talking about the future to the reason why you’re worried about the future,” said Shikha Iyer, a 19-year-old college student in Southern California.

Iyer started using AI for divination before she owned a tarot deck, asking chatbots to interpret playing cards she would pull. She still turns to Gemini when she’s stuck on a card and has been struck by the depth of the readings. But she holds back from sharing too much. 

“I’m kind of scared about putting my information online like that,” she said. For tarot to work, she thinks, it needs to know you. But so does the AI, and that’s the problem.

From a market perspective, the demand is growing. The cultural critic Mitch Therieau has termed rising interest in spirituality and the occult  “bust-time reenchantment” (opens in new tab) and attributed it to a widespread feeling of helplessness. A Pew Research report from May 2025 (opens in new tab) noted that 30% of U.S. adults consult astrology, tarot, or fortune-tellers. 

As the unemployment rate for recent college grads has climbed sharply, Gen Z has been looking for a spiritual anchor amid the uncertainty. Certainly, commercial enterprises are taking advantage. Spotify divines your audio aura (opens in new tab). Co-Star generates horoscopes from NASA data (opens in new tab). A San Francisco startup called TarotPunk has launched a tarot deck aimed at founders seeking answers about their fundraising rounds.

There is even an app, Sanctuary, (opens in new tab) for those looking for a “hybrid option” of (opens in new tab)AI-powered tarot readings alongside live sessions with human fortune tellers. It may seem strange to turn to something without a soul for spiritual guidance, but even some longtime human practitioners are grudgingly impressed with the results.

Leslie Schaffer, 45, has been practicing divination in San Francisco for three decades and provides in-person tarot readings at Brouhaha Boutique in the Lower Haight. At The Standard’s behest, she agreed to let ChatGPT try a reading for her. The AI identified elemental patterns and offered interpretations from a standard three-card spread, as well as the nine-card layout she uses with clients. 

“I hate to say it, but I don’t think it’s terrible,” Schaffer said. “But it doesn’t breathe. It’s not the same.” 

As a third-generation San Franciscan, Schaffer has a longer view of what is being traded away. 

“What this city was, what it has always been, was a place for weirdos and outliers and artists and outcasts,” she said. “It feels very incongruous with what’s happening now with tech.” 

She is not dismissive of AI’s appeal, though: “Anything that people find comforting in difficult times has value.” 

Justin Lai, a 31-year-old Mission native and part-time tarot reader who has spent years doing readings in public spaces around San Francisco, is less forgiving. For Lai, what AI removes is precisely what makes tarot worthwhile.

“The magic in tarot is the interpersonal,” he said. “The point is that you have to connect with someone, and they’re fallible. You kind of have to work together to figure something out.”

Lai sees the collision between tech culture and divination in San Francisco as unsurprising but troubling.

“San Francisco is the most ‘Go west, young man’ place there is,” he said. “You have this confluence of cutting-edge technology with supposedly cutting-edge spiritual practices. But the interesting stuff in tech can silence the interesting stuff that came before it, or even worse, co-opt it.”

Penny Kimberling, a freshman at UC Berkeley, learned to read tarot during the pandemic as a way to connect with friends she couldn’t see in person. Kimberling uses the practice less as an oracle and more as a weighing stone for decision-making. In a moment when the future is genuinely unreadable, that is no small thing. 

“It is so terrifying existing as a young person nowadays, because you have no idea what job security is going to look like. AI is taking over a myriad of fields,” she said. 

For Kimberling, AI fills the gap left by a culture that has made vulnerability feel shameful — offering round-the-clock solace and asking nothing in return. 

Chatbots are discreet, and for Zou, that privacy is a key part of the appeal. She uses AI for talk therapy, turning to it when she is struggling with her roommate or just wants someone to talk to without judgment. The chatbot that told her Wellesley was the right school is now helping her cope with being there.