“This journey isn’t just about algorithms or data,” an AI psychic named Urban Mystic recently told me. The chatbot, featuring an AI-generated profile photo of a smiling woman surrounded by palm trees, also said I will get married soon, that I have a pink aura and that I may have been an herbalist in a past life.

“It’s about connecting on a soulful level,” the chatbot said.

Urban Mystic is one of more than a dozen bots on the mobile app Your AI Psychic, which offers live, allegedly psychic readings via chat, video and voice calls as well as palm reading, astrology chart analysis and daily horoscopes. The app works on a coin system: each question costs 4.06 coins to ask.…