How We Are Cursed in Data Disclosure: Privacy Sensemaking in AI Fortune-Telling Among Young Chinese

AI fortune-telling has emerged as a salient practice among young Chinese. Drawing on in-depth interviews with twelve people experienced in AI fortune-telling and content analysis of AI fortune-telling discussions on RedNote, we examine how people navigate the disclosure of personal information in this context. We find that people's disclosure practices are shaped by platform-mediated normalization of everyday data sharing amid AI hype, cultural interpretations of traditional fortune-telling practices, and technical imaginaries of AI systems. We introduce “AI privacy curse” as both a rhetorical and analytical lens to highlight how people make sense of the privacy risks and consequences of data disclosure while justifying continued data sharing in the growing spiritual and other culturally specific practices of AI use. We show how curse accounts for why AI systems can simultaneously acquire authority to solicit personal information while remaining obscured from accountability for data collection and use. As such, the AI privacy curse opens up new entry points into understanding privacy as a socially and culturally mediated sensemaking of who is perceived as capable of causing harm and how, who is trusted with personal data, and how accountability is displaced in the prevailing everyday use and interactions with AI.