By Tim Binnall
Japanese social media users are being warned against engaging with online fortune tellers, as the 'soothsayers' are now, more often than not, sophisticated AI schemes. A former mystic who goes by the moniker Manemane sounded the alarm about the worrisome trend to a local media outlet, cautioning that what one might believe to be a genuine psychic is very likely a chatbot trained to trick people by mimicking the writing style of the country's better-known clairvoyants. "The AI isn't telling fortunes; it’s just learning this algorithm," she declared, "in short, people are being played for suckers."
Manemane revealed that the scam begins with an online ad offering a free psychic reading that serves to lure in unwitting victims. After gaining a person's trust over the course of a fabricated conversation, the AI chatbot pivots to the all-too-familiar tactic of 'sensing' troubles ahead for the client and insisting that only a significant sum of money can reverse their misfortune. Should the scheme prove successful, the phony online psychic banks the cash and closes the account to prevent being traced before repeating the process on another unfortunate individual.
Interestingly, Manemane advised those who wind up being duped to refrain from talking about the situation online because they could quickly become the target of additional scammers. "It's like declaring to the world, 'I am a gullible mark,'" the former fortune teller mused, noting that such psychic shenanigans are largely unregulated in Japan. Alas, experts warn that the problem of phony digital clairvoyants is likely only to get worse as artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated, suggesting that even the 'job' of unscrupulous faux psychic is not safe from the ever-increasing reach of AI.