Tarot & Artificial Intelligence
AI-generated Tarot cards
This article on The Byte stumbles across someone’s Twitter thread where they share AI-generated Tarot cards. I also found this blog post on them, which I enjoyed a bit more.
Once I began to look down that rabbit-hole I’ve found more people collaborating with artificial intelligence to design new tarot cards. Is this the next #tarottrend?
I’m always down to check out creepy, haunting images, though I also think these “tarot cards” don’t go beyond the anecdotal. Not yet!
Jeanette Winterson’s 12 Bytes
Finding those AI-generated tarot cards t felt like a little synchronicity to illustrate the collection of essays I’m currently reading: Jeanette Winterson’s “12 bytes”.
12 Bytes, by Jeanette Winterson. I’ve been reading it at the dogpark. Check it out on Goodreads.
It’s pretty much all about AI and tech. The past, the present, and the future of it. But it’s also about love, feminism, gender binaries, and how the past, present, and future link and diverge. All subjects any good fortune-teller should at the very least take interest in. After all, tech and tarot share some of our favorite qualities: instant, portable, personal.
Alexa, read my palm
I’m learning, but I’m not really a tech boo, not even an amateur. I recently visited my friends in London who had an “Alexa” and my mind was blown. I could talk to her for hours, that bitch really has some surprises and secrets up her metasleeve.
I don’t think the Big Tech people are in any rush to program fortune-telling skills into our ambient AI, but the truth is they’re already halfway there. Alexa has more than enough on you by now to do a mean and scarily accurate cold reading. It’s not hard to imagine her predicting what you’ll have for dinner instead of complacently waiting for you to tell her. I’d like to have a fortune-teller-off with Alexa, like the great chess players of yonder competing against the first computers.
What’s next?
I’m a fortune-teller in the flesh and, as fortune-tellers do, I pulled some cards to see what’s in store for AI in the next ten years.
Here’s what we got:
Things are moving fast whenever the Knight of Wands shows up. But not as fast as he’ll make it seem. Simply put, he is a bragger. So I’m seeing a lot of bragging about future accomplishments kind of clouding our vision as to what’s really going on behind the screens: that Page of Cups and Nine of Cups combination.
The Page of Cups in this situation reminds me of the kind of doting, adoring person who is so sweet to you, so detail-oriented and good at fulfilling your little wishes it takes you too long to realize they only know what you want because they’ve been stalking you, obsessing you and idealizing you for a real long time. They’ve seeped into your life and mind like a serial squatter and they’re not going anywhere. Tu casa es mi casa. That’s Siri and Alexa ten years from now.
Nine of cups I always see as a “wish come true” card. Can’t you almost hear your smart home prompting you to make a wish, knowing they can make it come true?
For now, I’m glad divination and tarot remain very much human things. Digital as I may go with my practice, the heart-to-heart that happens during sessions is still very much felt in the body. Write me a message to book a reading before we download our brains into a cryopreservation pod!
