Joe Yates
A Michigan woman has won the lottery after asking an AI chatbot to pick her lottery numbers - and it actually worked.
While there was no way of the AI chatbot actually knowing what six numbers would come up, Tammy Carvey still playfully asked ChatGPT to come up with the winning Powerball digits for her.
The 45-year-old, from Wyandotte, decided to try her luck after the jackpot soared to a jaw-dropping $1.787 billion.
“I asked ChatGPT for a set of Powerball numbers and those are the numbers I played,” Carvey explained to KARE 11 after collecting her prize.
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The numbers - 11, 23, 44, 61, 62 and powerball 17 - ended up matching four white balls and the red powerball, scoring Carvey an impressive $50,000... but because she’d opted for the Power Play feature, her winnings actually increased.
Her prize pot instantly doubled to a cool $100,000.
Carvey admitted she doesn’t normally play the lottery unless the jackpot ticks over nine digits.
"I only play Powerball when the jackpot gets up there and the jackpot was over $1 billion, so I bought a ticket,” she said.
The Wayne County woman didn’t even realise how much she’d won at first, as she forgotten about the Power Play feature that she ticked when paying for the ticket.
"Google told me it was a $50,000 prize, so that’s what I thought I’d won," she said. "It wasn’t until I logged into my Michigan Lottery account that I realized I added the Power Play to my ticket and actually won $100,000! My husband and I were in total disbelief."
Carvey now plans to put her AI-assisted windfall to practical use - paying off the rest of her home and saving the remainder.
While it might sound like a sci-fi plot, officials at Michigan Lottery were quick to clarify that her win was still down to sheer luck.
"The results of all Lottery drawings are random and cannot be predicted by utilizing artificial intelligence or other number-generating tools," they said.
Carvey isn’t alone, either - incredibly, Virginian Carrie Edwards also managed to cash in after asking ChatGPT for a set of winning numbers, bagging $50,000 that turned into $150,000 thanks to her own Power Play multiplier.
The historic September jackpot was split by two players who matched the exact combination, and while AI didn’t 'predict' the outcome, it’s clear some people are having fun letting technology do the picking.