IE 11 Not Supported

For optimal browsing, we recommend Chrome, Firefox or Safari browsers.

Why should you probably not trust ChatGPT to read your tea leaves?

Answer: Because it might accuse your partner of cheating on you.

The art of divination through reading tea leaves or coffee grounds, also known as tasseography, has been trending lately, but with a twist. Users are turning artificial intelligence into the diviner and asking for its interpretation of their future. But when one Greek woman decided to ask ChatGPT to interpret a photo of the grounds left at the bottom of her husband’s coffee cup after he drank it, the chatbot told her that he was fantasizing about having an affair with another woman.

She then asked it to read the grounds in her own cup, and it continued along the same thread, telling her that the affair had already begun and that the other woman was trying to destroy their family. The wife, who reportedly has a history of believing mystical guidance, took ChatGPT at its word and filed for divorce, without telling her husband. “I laughed it off as nonsense,” he said. “But she didn’t. She told me to leave, informed our kids about the divorce, and the next thing I knew, I was getting a call from her lawyer.”

This unfortunate turn of events in what started as a fun trend reinforces the importance of checking AI tools’ answers for factual accuracy, something their disclaimers warn users about. Perhaps it would be best if we just leave tasseography to the Hogwarts professors.