I’ve seen a bunch of “AI Tarot Reader” websites show up lately and I keep getting ads for them.
How is this any different from those websites that would just pick random cards and do the same thing? Except now people are asking you to PAY for this nonsense? It looks like such a scam to me I don’t see how anyone serious about the Tarot could be using something like this?
You’re not getting anything there. It’s just a bot picking random cards and generating text. We’ve had this for 10+ years and it’s always been a scam but now because they include “AI” suddenly it’s okay? Am I missing something here?
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Maybe a “scam” is a hard word as long as they’re being honest about it being AI, but I don’t see where the value comes from at all. You could basically ask ChatGPT to guess what’s going to happen and get the exact same result.
Anyone who has really worked with the Tarot will ignore them and spot the problem immediately.
The problem is in the long term it’s going to mislead a lot of people who think it’s actually doing something useful. People will quit on the Tarot with these useless generic messages before seeing anything from a real Tarot reader.
Yep, I hate them. We have vulnerable people talking to AI (and we’ve all seen how badly that goes in the news lately). Some of these sites charge $30+ for ‘detailed’ readings with zero human connection or aftercare.
At least with human readers, there’s accountability and often genuine care for the person asking. These AI sites don’t follow up when someone gets a difficult Death or Tower reading, they just take the money and move on to the next customer.
I treat these tools more like a library assistant than some mystical oracle, just ask for sources. The decent ones will cite stuff like the Golden Dawn decans, Waite’s Pictorial Key, or Etteilla when you ask, and they’ll explain their reasoning. I also pay attention to where my questions end up. If the site says they won’t train on personal prompts and lets me export/delete my history, I’m more comfortable playing around with it.
I still don’t think it is anything like a real Tarot reading.
Maybe useful if you were practicing to read yourself but if it tells you a different meaning and you question it because you know the real meaning it will just turn around and go “Oh yes you were right let me do that again…”
If a site wants your money, ask how it shuffles. The transparent ones show you the random seed, timestamp, and deck settings so you can check the draw yourself, no stacked deck.
Look for sites that use an audited RNG or have a ‘provably fair’ system you can actually verify.
And even then it’s still just making stuff up. I don’t know why anyone would do this.
What worries me about AI tarot sites is how they strip out the care and personal connection that make a reading matter. When I pull cards during the waning moon, there’s a gut-level link between my energy and the deck that an algorithm can’t copy. For me, tarot is the practice of sitting with the cards and letting the story unfold through my own read and life experience. I’m not looking for a bot to spit out text.
I tried a few of those sites just to see. They string words together fine, but there’s no real presence behind the reading. It feels like a handwritten note versus a form email. It also got all sorts of things wrong from simple card meanings to combinations it just completely ignored.
Maybe I’m old-school. I think tarot needs that human spark, especially when you’re looking for guidance. The sites don’t give me that.
I get where you’re coming from. Real readings and AI ones are completely different.
When I do readings, I’m using intuition and connecting with the person’s energy. An algorithm can’t do that. These AI sites are basically random card generators with good marketing. The whole point of Tarot is the reader picking up on energies, noticing patterns, and using their own experience to interpret the cards. Software can’t do any of that.
You’re right to be skeptical. Real Tarot needs that connection between the reader, the person getting the reading, and the cards. Save your money for actual readers.
Some of them look really impressive, but they’re the same fake crap we’ve had on Tarot sites for years. People who want a real reading will still look for a human who understands, not just a tool that generates random words.
Yeah you’re right about this. Don’t even get me started on how these AI readers give you the most generic fortune-cookie interpretations. Like oh great, ‘The Three of Cups suggests celebration is coming your way’, that’s what every tarot book says. Where’s the intuition? Where’s the energy exchange?
Where’s that moment when a real reader looks at your spread and suddenly connects the Seven of Swords to that specific thing you mentioned five minutes ago? The whole point of tarot is the human connection and intuitive insights. These AI sites are just random number generators charging $19.99 for what you could get from flipping to any random page in a beginner’s book.
At least the old free online readings from 2010 didn’t pretend to be something special.
The worst AI tarot sites are basically those old ‘you’re cursed, pay us $79.99 to fix it’ scams with a new coat of paint. Now they use algorithms that supposedly find your ‘karmic blockages’ or whatever, and surprise, you need a premium subscription to fix them. Real online tarot readers build their reputation through actual skill and happy clients. These AI sites just target people who are struggling and hit them with scare tactics disguised as spiritual advice.
The whole point of tarot is supposed to be about understanding yourself better, not getting hooked on monthly payments to some bot. Some of these sites are getting pretty sophisticated with their manipulation though.
These AI tarot sites target people looking for quick answers about their future and charge monthly subscriptions for what’s basically a digital guidebook dressed up as mysticism. It’s frustrating seeing newcomers hit these paywalls when they could buy a decent deck and a reference book and learn the cards for themselves.
These AI systems are entirely soulless. Anyone trying to use them for any kind of spiritual work is only deluding themselves.
If you look at how Tarot really works, there can’t possibly be any value to these apps. They’re just randomised word generators, so you might as well just be guessing at your answers, because an AI site isn’t actually using the Tarot.
Nothing replaces a skilled human reader and that energetic exchange. You are lying to yourself and doing a disservice to your path if you use AI readings.
AI is, by its very definition, soulless. It is about as far from spirituality as you can get.
a scam.