Co-Star has a new astrology machine that answers questions with ChatGPT. I tried it and see how it's the future.

It's popular with the demographic that has embraced astrology in recent years to cope with the stress of day-to-day life or even in lieu of religion.

"There's been a loss of geographically rooted or religious identity, which has led to a rise in mobile and fluid chosen identities," Paige Doherty, a Gen Z venture capitalist, previously told Insider on why astrology apps have become so popular with her generation.

Back in 2019, The Verge reported that Co-Star had just over 5 million accounts.

Co-Star is also venture-backed, but declined to provide figures on how much money it has raised to date. PitchBook noted that company raised a little less than $21 million as of March 2021.

Co-Star told Insider that the design of the machine was inspired by "vintage NASA, Soyuz capsule control panels, and mainframe computers."

Soyuz (which means "union" in Russian) is a Russian space exploration programme that began in the 1960s, according to The European Space Agency. The Soyuz spacecraft itself is composed of a rocket which launches the capsule into space.

"We wanted to bring a tactility to the abstraction of AI," Co-Star's team said.

This series of dials, for example, adjusts according to the positioning of the planets in a user's natal chart.

While the machine itself is free to use, it was developed to promote a new service on Co-Star's app called The Void in which users can receive answers to any question they type in starting at around $1 each.

Co-Star told Insider by email that existing AI tools like ChatGPT are "awful at astrology" since they don't rely on the exact positions of the planets to generate answers.

Instead, they said their machine relies on a system that integrates AI with their database of astrological writing and algorithms for traditional astrological calculations.

"Answers aren't just based on the question, but on the asker's natal chart and current astrology," Co-Star said.

In order to generate these answers the company said they determine "the most relevant astrological tool to the question" and then use a proprietary algorithm they've built over the past 5 years to find the relevant planet placements or transits in a user's natal chart.

Co-Star told Insider that the questions were not generated AI, but instead by Co-Star's "in-house team of astrologers and poets"

Co-Star's team told Insider via email that the company has been using AI in some capacity since 2018.

… since I'm both basic and narcissistic.

That includes the month, the day, and the year, the time (if you know it), and the city.

All of this information is used by AI to compose a personalized answer, which takes into account the position of the planets when a user was born and the current positions of the planets, Co-Star explained over email.

Co-Star told me that "with Jupiter and Mars in the 12th house, there is a tendency to feel overshadowed."

By the time I read this, I had become so invested in the process that I was, actually, a bit disappointed. I had initially blamed it on the general gloom of the internet. What could I really expect from an astrological forecast that had been delegated to a predictive model like GPT-3, trained on vast stores of textual data gathered online?

Then, of course, the company explained that the base of its system is actually the "thousands of pieces of astrological content" that its team of astrologers, poets, and writers have crafted over the years.

I wondered if that mean that my fate as a "side character" was determined in the context of thousands, if not millions, of other people. What could be a better predictor of where I fit into the universe than that?

I didn't really have a person in mind for the question of "Will we ever be friends again?" but the verdict that this hypothetical "we" would not exist was a little sad.

I suddenly began thinking about all the articles I had scrolled past recently on how every relationship has a natural ending.

… and on winning the lottery, I feel like the machine was trying to offer me some sort of veiled (maybe constructive) criticism. "Fortune favors the courageous. Not just those seeking financial gain."

On the one hand, AI can help a lean company like Co-Star — which has just 30 employees — scale their writing and provide users with answers to their queries in real-time.

Beyond that, though, Co-Star says that AI can help them draw upon a more comprehensive astrological system for generating answers, predictions, and writing.

"Most astrology is based on your sun sign alone — one small part of a massive solar system," Co-Star told Insider by email. "The moon, the planets, and the twelve houses of the zodiac are essential to our whole. Without them, our horoscope barely skims the surface."

You could think of it as writing a book report on the title alone, Co-Star added.

"We use AI to translate all that data into completely personalized writing for tens of millions of people," the company said.