The interesting part was to confront something extremely physical and personal, the palms of my own hands, with centuries of symbolism and interpretation, and see what kind of portrait emerged.
I first sent a photograph of my right hand. The AI examined the overall shape of the palm, the length of the fingers, the position of the thumb, the life line, heart line, head line, the famous fate line and the countless smaller lines crossing the skin.
Then I photographed my other hand.
That was when things became much more interesting.
Traditional palmistry does not necessarily interpret both hands in exactly the same way. For a right-handed person, one hand is often associated with innate tendencies and potential, while the other is supposed to reflect what life, experience and personal choices have made of them.
And the portrait that gradually emerged was intriguing.
The first thing ChatGPT noticed was my unusually long head line, running across the palm and sloping toward its outer edge.
In traditional palmistry, such a line is associated with a mind driven not only by rational thought but by imagination, visual thinking, intuition, associations and the ability to construct entire worlds internally.
For someone who has spent much of his life taking photographs, writing, making films and creating images, that was an amusing coincidence.
Then came my life lines.
Both are long, broad and relatively continuous. Contrary to one of the great popular myths about palmistry, this does not mean that I am destined to live to a great age. Even traditional palmistry generally treats that interpretation as simplistic.
Instead, a broad life line is supposed to represent the way someone engages with existence: energy, experiences, relationships and a desire not to live within boundaries that are too narrow.
But what particularly caught ChatGPT’s attention was the extraordinary number of smaller lines covering my palms.
My hands are full of them, especially around the base of the thumb.
In the traditional vocabulary of palmistry, this would suggest someone who retains traces of experience: relationships, encounters, attachments, memories and emotional events.
The AI came up with an expression I particularly liked:
“A hand with a story.”
My heart line seemed to tell a similar story.
Long, curved and surrounded by numerous smaller branches, it would traditionally be associated with an intense emotional life, not necessarily chaotic, but one in which relationships and feelings leave lasting marks.
Another striking feature is the position of my thumbs.
In both photographs, they naturally extend quite far away from the palm.
Traditional palmistry interprets this as a sign of independence: difficulty accepting arbitrary restrictions, a strong desire to make one’s own decisions and, above all, a considerable need for personal freedom.
Then we reached the famous fate line.
And here there was bad news for anyone hoping that my existence resembles a perfectly straight highway.
Mine looks more like a French country road network.
The line is there, but it is neither perfectly straight nor overwhelmingly dominant. It encounters other lines, changes intensity and seems to develop through several distinct stages.
Symbolically, ChatGPT interpreted this as the hand of someone whose path was not predetermined early in life, but gradually constructed through changes of direction, different activities and perhaps several lives within one lifetime.
Considering that I have worked, sometimes simultaneously, as a photographer, writer, filmmaker, journalist, publisher and teacher, I had to smile.
Even my ring finger got its moment of glory.
Relatively prominent compared with the index finger, it is traditionally associated with Apollo: aesthetics, creativity, representation and the desire to produce something that can be seen by others.
Again, for someone whose life revolves around images, the coincidence was rather entertaining.
But the most interesting part came when ChatGPT compared my two hands.
Their overall architecture is similar, yet one appears considerably more intricate and densely marked than the other.
The AI turned this into a surprisingly elegant interpretation:
I had not become someone fundamentally different over time. I had become a much more complex version of someone who was already there.
Of course, this needs to be approached critically.
Part of the feeling of recognition may simply come from what psychologists call the Barnum effect: our tendency to recognize ourselves in descriptions that are sufficiently broad or flattering. Artificial intelligence is also remarkably good at constructing coherent narratives from scattered pieces of information.
Turning this experiment into scientific evidence would therefore be absurd.
But that is precisely why I found it interesting.
Perhaps the real question is not:
“Can AI tell me who I am by looking at my hands?”
Perhaps it is:
“What have centuries of human culture imagined when looking at hands like mine?”
In that sense, artificial intelligence becomes less of a fortune teller and more of a narrative mirror.
It observes. It compares. It draws upon a vast cultural tradition. Then it gives us a story.
We are free to decide which parts feel accurate, which seem completely wrong and, perhaps most interestingly, why.
So I genuinely recommend trying the experiment yourself.
Take clear photographs of both palms in natural light, with your fingers comfortably spread and enough resolution for the smaller lines to remain visible. Send one hand first and ask ChatGPT for a detailed interpretation based on traditional palmistry. Then send the second and ask it to compare the two.
And don’t immediately provide your entire biography.
That makes the experiment much more interesting.
Don’t ask ChatGPT exactly how many years you have left to live.
Don’t ask whether you will become a billionaire next Tuesday either.
Just ask it to tell you the story of your hands.
You probably won’t discover your future.
But strangely enough, you may find yourself thinking about your past — and about the person you have become.
