When Amy Waine and Jarrad Cutting investigate haunted locations, they’re loaded up with software of their own design, such as an app that assigns signals from a phone’s sensors to different words in a database. In the age of ChatGPT, the ghost-hunting pair is probing the world of AI. They describe one of their latest inventions, an app called GhostTube Seer, as “the world’s first AI Ghost Hunting tool”.
In the hands of paranormal investigators, scientific tools like EMF meters (used to detect electromagnetic fields) are repurposed to identify changes and anomalies that they believe indicate supernatural activity. Seer is, in many ways, simply an expansion of that practice, another way to scan an empty room and believe that something may be there. The app, which requires a paid monthly subscription, has more than 1m downloads, according to its Google Play store listing.
But for others in the ghost hunting world, AI is an unwelcome presence. Since the release of ChatGPT in 2022, AI-generated ghost stories and images of the supernatural have flooded online spaces, so much so that popular forums like the r/Nosleep subreddit, meant for scary stories, have implemented a strict policy against AI-generated material. Waine and Cutting claim their app can generate images depicting the supernatural, using signals from a phone’s built-in magnetometer, identifying words and phrases in those signals, and then running them through an image generator.
Fellow paranormal enthusiasts can post the images they generate to a feed and comment on other users’ pictures. Since its release in 2023, Seer has become a regular part of their onscreen work. In a recent video on their Amy’s Crypt YouTube channel, the pair sat in a carefully selected location in the Winchester Mystery House while running GhostTube Seer.
The app generated an abstract compilation of wooden walls and golden curtains that the pair suggested could be one of the home’s bedrooms. Seer also generated images of humans and animals while running: a woman reading, another woman with a black shawl, and a flock of white birds flying. Each was interpreted by the pair to have some relevance to the history of the home.
The pursuit of ghosts has historically been relatively niche and personal, even after early 2000s TV shows like Ghost Hunters prompted a surge of interest in the hobby. That’s changed in recent years. Ghost stories and sightings, once they find their way online, can become training material for large language models like ChatGPT or Google Gemini, just like any other content.
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