Study Documents Growing Use of AI Chatbots for Divination on Chinese Social Media
A new academic study documents a widespread practice of using large language models for divination on Chinese social media platforms, analyzing over 23,000 posts and 32 interviews. The research examines 'Xuanxue,' an umbrella term for mystical and spiritual practices online, finding users consult AI about relationships, careers, and exams. The findings reveal how AI is reshaping traditional divinatory authority while preserving its core psychological and social functions.
Researchers from arXiv's computer science and AI community have published one of the first systematic studies of LLM-mediated divination, focusing on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu. Analyzing more than 23,000 posts and comments alongside 32 semi-structured interviews with both users and professional diviners, the study finds that people engage with AI fortune-telling through two main pathways: viral curiosity driven by zero-cost access, and anxiety-driven consultations during uncertain life events. A notable behavioral pattern is 'collaborative prompt refinement,' in which users iteratively engineer their prompts to obtain more satisfying readings. Perceived accuracy is largely explained by well-documented cognitive phenomena such as the Barnum effect and confirmation bias, with users also developing verification strategies like repeated trials and cross-model comparisons. Professional diviners, meanwhile, dismiss AI as lacking genuine 'spiritual power,' a stance the researchers interpret as both a sincere ontological belief and a form of economic boundary-work protecting their livelihoods. The study situates these findings within anthropological and cognitive-evolutionary theories of divination, arguing that LLM-based divination preserves traditional functions while introducing new dynamics of scalability, repeatability, and user co-production.
What's missing
The paper does not detail how the 32 interview participants were recruited or whether they are representative of the broader user population. Longitudinal effects — whether AI divination use increases or decreases over time and what impact it has on users' decision-making — are not addressed.
What different sources said
- arXiv cs.AICenter
Divination by Prompt: LLM-Mediated Xuanxue on Chinese Social Media
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