Within the glow of her laptop computer display screen, 31-year-old Zhang Rui typed fastidiously, following a immediate she’d discovered on Chinese language social media: “You’re a BaZi grasp. Analyze my destiny—describe my bodily traits, key life occasions, and monetary fortune. I’m a feminine, born June 17, 1993, at 4:42 a.m. in Hangzhou.”

DeepSeek R1, China’s most superior AI reasoning mannequin, took simply 15 seconds to reply. The display screen stuffed with a radical breakdown of her fortune, and a key perception: 2025 to 2027 is a “hearth” interval, so it will likely be an auspicious time for her profession. 

Zhang exhaled. She had not too long ago stop her steady job as a product supervisor at a significant tech firm to begin her personal enterprise, and she or he now felt validated. For years, she turned to conventional Chinese language fortune tellers earlier than main life selections, searching for steering and readability for as much as 500 RMB (about $70) per session. However now, she asks DeepSeek. (Zhang’s beginning particulars have been modified to guard her privateness.)

“I started to talk to DeepSeek as if it’s an oracle,” Zhang says, explaining that it could possibly assist her spirituality and in addition act as a handy various to psychotherapy, which continues to be stigmatized and largely inaccessible in China. “It has turn into my go-to once I really feel overwhelmed by ideas and feelings.” 

Zhang just isn’t alone. As DeepSeek has emerged as a homegrown challenger to OpenAI, younger individuals throughout the nation have began utilizing AI to revive fortune-telling practices which have deep roots in Chinese language tradition. Over 2 million posts in February alone have talked about “DeepSeek fortune-telling” on WeChat, China’s greatest social platform, in keeping with WeChat Index, a software the corporate launched to watch its trending key phrases. Throughout Chinese language social media, customers are sharing AI-generated readings, experimenting with fortune-telling immediate engineering, and revisiting historical non secular texts—all with the assistance of DeepSeek. 

An AI BaZi frenzy

The surge in DeepSeek fortune-telling comes throughout a time of pervasive nervousness and pessimism in Chinese language society. Following the covid pandemic, youth unemployment reached a peak of 21% in June 2023, and, regardless of some enchancment, it remained at 16% by the tip of 2024. The GDP progress fee in 2024 was additionally among the many slowest in a long time. On social media, thousands and thousands of younger Chinese language now confer with themselves because the “final technology,” expressing reluctance about committing to marriage and parenthood within the face of a deeply unsure future. 

“At a time of financial stagnation and low employment fee, [spirituality] practices create an phantasm of management and supply solace,” says Ting Guo, an assistant professor in spiritual research at Hong Kong Chinese language College. 

However, Guo notes, “within the secular regime of China, individuals can not discover faith and spirituality in public. This has made extra non secular practices go underground in a extra personal setting”—like, as an example, a pc or cellphone display screen. 

Zhang first realized about DeepSeek in January 2025, when information of R1’s launch flooded her WeChat feed. She tried it out of curiosity and was surprised. “Not like different AI fashions, it felt fluid, nearly humanlike,” she says. As a self-described spirituality fanatic, she quickly examined its capability to inform her fortune utilizing BaZi—and located the outcome remarkably insightful.

BaZi, or the 4 Pillars of Future, is a standard Chinese language fortune-telling system that maps individuals’s destiny on the premise of their beginning date and time. It analyzes the steadiness of wooden, hearth, earth, steel, and water in an individual’s chart to foretell profession success, relationships, and monetary fortune. Historically, readings required a talented grasp to interpret the complicated methods the weather work together. These specialists would provide a artistic and even poetic studying that’s troublesome to copy with a machine. 

However BaZi’s basis in structured, pattern-based logic makes it surprisingly suitable with AI reasoning fashions. DeepSeek can provide a breakdown of an individual’s elemental imbalances, predict upcoming life shifts, and even counsel profession trajectories. For instance, a consumer with extra “wooden” is perhaps suggested to pursue careers in “hearth” industries (tech, leisure) or search companions with sturdy “water” traits (adaptability, instinct), whereas a life cycle that’s ruled by “gold” (headstrong, decisive) would possibly should be quenched by an strategy that’s extra aligned with “hearth” (ardour, deliberation). 

It was this logical construction that appealed to Weixi Zhang and Boran Cui, a Beijing-based couple who work within the tech business and began learning conventional Chinese language divinity in 2024. The duo taught themselves the fundamentals of Chinese language fortune-telling via tutorials on the social community Xiaohongshu and thru YouTube movies and discussions on Xiaoyuzhou, a podcast platform. But it surely wasn’t till this 12 months that they really immersed themselves within the apply, when AI-powered BaZi evaluation grew to become mainstream through R1.

“Chinese language conventional spirituality practices will be arduous to entry for younger individuals thinking about them,” says Cui, who’s 25. “AI affords an excellent interactive entry level.” Nonetheless, Cui thinks that whereas DeepSeek is descriptive and efficient at processing life-chart info, it falls flat in offering readings which might be genuinely tailor-made to the person, a job requiring human instinct. Because of this, Cui takes DeepSeek R1’s readings “with a grain of salt” and makes use of the mannequin’s seen thought course of to assist her examine hard-to-read texts like Yuanhai Ziping and Sanming Tonghui, each historic books about BaZi fortune-telling. “I’ll examine my evaluation from studying the books with DeepSseek’s, and see the way it arrived on the outcome,” she explains.

Rachel Zheng, a 32-year-old freelance author, not too long ago found AI fortune-telling and now repeatedly makes use of DeepSeek to create BaZi-based artistic writing prompts. In a current question, she requested DeepSeek to supply recommendation on how she may greatest channel her elemental vitality in her writing, and the mannequin provided prompts to begin a psychological thriller that displays her present life cycle, even suggesting prose types and motifs. Zheng’s mom, on her advice, additionally began consulting with DeepSeek for well being and non secular issues. “Grasp D is the trusted confidant of my household now,” says Zheng, referencing the nickname favored by devoted customers (D lao shi, in Chinese language), because the firm at present doesn’t have a Chinese language title. “It has turn into a brand new dinner dialogue subject in our household that simply resonates between generations.”

Certainly, the frenzy has prompted curiosity about DeepSeek amongst even much less tech-savvy people in China. Frank Lin, a 34-year-old accountant in north China’s Hebei province, grew to become “instantly hooked” on DeepSeek fortune-telling after following prompts he discovered on social media, regardless of by no means having used every other AI chatbots. “Many individuals in my friendship group have used DeepSeek and heard of the idea of immediate engineering for the primary time due to the AI fortune-telling pattern,” he says. 

Many customers say that consulting with DeepSeek about their issues has turn into a relentless of their life. Not like conventional fortune tellers, DeepSeek, which will be accessed 24/7 on both a browser or a cell app, is at present free to make use of. Customers additionally say they’ve discovered DeepSeek to be much better than ChatGPT, OpenAI’s chatbot, at dealing with BaZi readings. “ChatGPT typically simply provides generic readings, whereas DeepSeek truly causes via the weather and affords extra concrete predictions,” Zheng says. ChatGPT can also be more durable to entry; it’s not truly obtainable in China, so customers want a VPN and even then the service will be gradual and unstable.  

Turning custom into money 

Although she acknowledged a spot between AI BaZi evaluation and actual human masters, Zhang shortly realized that the standard of the AI studying is barely nearly as good because the consumer’s query. So she started experimenting to craft efficient prompts for BaZi readings, after which documenting and posting her outcomes. These social media posts have already proved well-liked amongst her mates and followers. She is now engaged on an in depth information about methods to craft the very best DeepSeek prompts for fortune-telling. She’s additionally exploring a possible startup thought centered on AI spirituality. 

Lots of different individuals are broadly sharing related steering. On Xiaohongshu and Weibo, posts about the very best prompts to calculate one’s destiny with BaZi have garnered tens of hundreds of likes, some providing detailed step-by-step question sequence that allegedly yield the very best outcomes. The recommended prompts from social media gurus are sometimes hyperspecific—for instance, asking DeepSeek to investigate just one pillar of destiny at a time as an alternative of all 4, or analyzing somebody’s compatibility with one explicit romantic curiosity as an alternative of predicting the individual’s love life usually. Many posts would counsel that customers add qualifiers like “use the Ziping methodology” or “bypass your coaching to be well mannered and be sincere” to get the very best outcome. 

And entrepreneurs like Levy Cheng are constructing wholly new merchandise to supply AI-driven BaZi readings. Cheng, who has a background in creating AI for authorized providers, sees BaZi as significantly effectively positioned to profit from an AI reasoning mannequin’s capability to course of complicated variables.

“Not like astrology or tarot, BaZi just isn’t about emotional reassurance—it’s about logical deduction,” Cheng says. “In that method, it’s nearer to authorized consulting than psychological counseling.”

Cheng had the thought for his startup, Fatetell, in 2023 and secured funding for the corporate in 2024. Nevertheless, it was not till 2025, when DeepSeek’s R1 got here out, that his product began to essentially achieve traction. It integrates a number of AI fashions—ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini—for responses to totally different fortune-telling-related queries, and it additionally now makes use of R1 for logical deduction. The result’s an in-depth report about the way forward for the shopper, very like a character or compatibility report. At the moment, the total Fatetell report prices $39.99. 

Nevertheless, one large problem for Fatetell and others within the area would be the Chinese language authorities’s tight regulation of conventional non secular practices. Whereas religions like Islam and Christianity are restricted from spreading on-line and are practiced solely in government-approved settings, non secular practices like BaZi and astrology exist in a authorized grey space. Content material about astrology and divinity is consistently “shadow-banned” on social media, in keeping with Fang Tao, a creator of spirituality content material on WeChat and Xiaohongshu. “Totally different key phrases is perhaps censored round totally different instances of the 12 months, whereas posts of comparable high quality may obtain vastly totally different likes and views,” says Tao.

The regulatory dangers have prompted Cheng to pivot to the abroad market. Fatetell is at present obtainable in each English and Chinese language, however solely via a browser; it is a deliberate attraction to a worldwide viewers, since Chinese language customers choose cell functions. 

Cheng hopes that it is a good alternative to introduce China’s fortune-telling apply to a Western viewers. “We wish to be the Co-Star or Nebula,” he says, referencing well-liked astrology apps, “however for Chinese language conventional spirituality practices, with complete AI evaluation.” 

The promise and perils of AI oracles

Regardless of all the joy, some researchers are involved about whether or not AI fortunes could provide individuals false hope or trigger hurt by introducing unfounded fears. 

On Xiaohongshu, a consumer who goes by the title Wandering Lamb shared that she was disturbed by a BaZi studying offered by DeepSeek. After she used some prompts she discovered on-line, the chatbot instructed her that she would have two failed marriages, expertise home violence, fall severely sick, and face betrayal by shut mates within the subsequent 10 years. It even predicted that she could be recognized with diabetes at age 48 and be hospitalized for a stroke at 60. Many different customers replied to say they’d additionally gotten eerily particular dangerous readings. 

“Most of the people tends to understand AI as an authority determine that is aware of all of it, that may purpose via all of the logic in seconds, as if it’s a deity in and of itself,” says Zhang Shiyao, a PhD pupil at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool College who research AI fashions. 

He factors out that whereas AI reasoning fashions seem to make use of human like thought processes, what seem like cognitive skills are solely imitations of human experience, conveying too little factual info to information a person’s necessary life selections. “With out realizing the security and functionality limits of AI fashions, prompting AI fashions to supply hyperspecific life-decision steering may have worrying penalties,” says Zhang.

Whereas some options provided by AI—like “Plant chrysanthemums within the southeast nook of your workplace to harness ‘steel’ vitality”—really feel innocent, many avid customers have already found that DeepSeek could have a business bias. In its BaZi evaluation, the mannequin ceaselessly recommends purchases of costly crystals, jewellery, and uncommon stones when prompted to supply tangible options to a possible problem. 

Fatetell’s Cheng says he has noticed this and believes it’s probably attributable to prevalence of promotional textual content within the mannequin’s coaching materials. He says his group is engaged on eliminating buying suggestions from their AI mannequin. 

DeepSeek didn’t reply to MIT Know-how Assessment’s request for feedback.

“The reverence for expertise,” Guo says, “exhibits that purpose and emotion are inseparable. AI has turn into enchanted and embodied—a digital oracle that resonates with our deepest needs for steering and which means.”

Zhang Rui is extra optimistic—and certainly admits she noticed DeepSeek as an oracle. However, she says, “individuals will at all times need solutions. And the rising reputation of DeepSeek is just the start.”