The AI fortune-telling machine is really here! ENESS turns a retro ATM into a psychological divination booth
Do you believe in AI fortune-telling results?
Summary
- Australian art and technology studio ENESS has launched an interactive installation, HP*ATM (Human Psyche AI Teller Machine), transforming a vintage ATM into an AI fortune-telling machine for the mind.
- Using facial recognition, palm analysis and interactive choices, the system generates a personalized psychological report in a poetic tone.
- The work draws inspiration from the wishing machine in the film “Big,” reinterpreting human–machine interaction in the age of AI.
- The installation combines elements like an old-style ATM, retro telephone and Japanese noren curtains, setting AI against outdated technology to reflect on the cycles of technological development.
Australian art and technology studio ENESS has launched an interactive installation, HP*ATM (Human Psyche AI Teller Machine), transforming a retro ATM into an AI-powered psychological fortune-telling machine. Through facial recognition, palm reading, and interactive choices, visitors receive a personalized psychological analysis report. Beneath this seemingly fun interactive experience lies a question: When people voluntarily hand their most private data over to AI, how much trust are we really placing in technology?
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When psychological analysis becomes a game
Images from ig / @studioeness
HP*ATM was inspired by Zoltar, the wish-granting machine in the 1988 film “Big.” ENESS founder Nimrod Weis has brought this fairy tale-like device into the AI age, allowing participants to choose whether to accept an AI analysis. That decision itself is also part of the work. Through this interactive experience, ENESS hopes to encourage people to reconsider the relationship of trust between people and AI, as well as how algorithms quietly shape the way we understand ourselves.
Using retro technology to reconsider AI’s future
Images from ig / @studioeness
Beyond its interactive elements, HP*ATM’s appearance is equally full of metaphor. The work encloses an old-fashioned ATM within a giant AI-generated inflatable sculpture, alongside a retro telephone and a Japanese noren curtain signaling that a business is open, placing technological symbols that are gradually being phased out beside today’s hottest AI. ATMs and telephones, once symbols of the future, have now become nostalgic objects. AI, seen today as a revolutionary technology, may eventually become a marker of this era in the eyes of the next generation.
The more familiar AI feels, the more readily do we trust it?
Images from ig / @studioeness
HP*ATM continues a theme ENESS has long explored: how to retain childlike curiosity in the adult world. Through humor, interaction, and gamified experiences, the work reduces the distance between viewers and technology, while also reminding people to reconsider the effects of AI becoming more humanlike. People have long been used to talking to machines, making them more likely to trust algorithms. Yet behind this sense of familiarity lie deeper issues that are often overlooked, including personal data, privacy, and technological power.
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