I Keep Seeing People Use AI to ‘Manifest’ Their Dream Life. Should I?

It’s a TikTok trend that’s been going on for some time now — people using ChatGPT and other AI tools to “manifest” their dream lives.

So far, I’ve avoided it, but when one of my editors noticed it trending again, I had to at least consider it: Am I the type of person who’d manifest? And then use AI to show me what my ideal life would look like?

My colleague Ana Altchek noticed the trend back in September. “Users are sharing how AI has helped them enhance their traditional manifestation practices, such as visualizations, vision boards, positive affirmations, mantras, and rewiring negative beliefs,” she reported at the time.

ChatGPT shows your dream life

I decided to investigate for myself, and I found that people essentially prompt AI to create a story about their dream life, based on their goals.

Let’s say your goals were to be rich, have flawless skin, snag a hunky husband and two kids, and live in a villa in Italy where you garden tomatoes. Enter those goals — manifest them, if you will — and it would whip up a story for you.

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Then, you could use it to create an action plan to actually get there.

I tried this out myself, asking ChatGPT to tell me a story about a day in my life in that Italian villa. I can’t deny it delivered an appealing tale:

The sun slipped gently over the Tuscan hills, casting gold across the rolling vineyards and awakening Villa Rosabella, your sun-washed estate tucked among olive trees and cypress-lined roads. The sheets were linen, cool and crisp, and the smell of blooming jasmine drifted in through open French doors. You stretched, not a wrinkle on your face, your skin dewy and flawless, like you’d just walked out of a spa in Capri (because you had — last weekend).

But when I asked it to give me steps to achieve this dream life, things got a little wonky. Although it had some decent practical advice about how to achieve flawless skin (“get a consultation with a top dermatologist,”) things got slightly more complicated when it came to the “becoming rich” part of the dream. It suggested things like, “Scale income to $500K+ annual revenue,” which … OK, sure?

To be fair, had I given it slightly more specific goals, it might have come up with a better plan. But I need to admit my bias here: I’m not really into the idea of manifesting. I’m happy for anyone who finds this useful, but it’s just not for me.

A while back, I DM’ed some of the people I’d seen talking about this life hack on social media. A few of them told me they really did believe in the power of manifestation — and had clear life goals in mind. (I realized that these women were younger than I am, just starting out in their adult lives. Whereas I’m old enough that my only life goal is just to ride this thing out.)

Manifesting on video

There’s also a new twist to the AI manifestations: video. The New York Times reported last week that people are using tools like Runway, Google’s Veo 3, or a tool called Freepik to enter a real image of themselves that’s then used to illustrate a real (fake) life. For example, I could upload a picture of myself, and then have AI create a video of me sauntering around my Tuscan tomato grove.

I wanted to give it a try, so I tried to use Freepik, which one of the women interviewed by the Times used. But there was a catch: Freepik required a paid account to create video— and there’s no way I’m going to scale my income to $500,000 if I’m throwing it all away on AI tools, so I declined.

Personally, I don’t think I want to see a video of myself in a dream life, anyway.

I don’t think it would make me feel bad per se — or jealous of my dream AI self. And I’m not afraid that the AI version of me might come to life and murder and replace me. I simply do not wish to engage with such content. It just does not appeal to me at all.

Perhaps I lack a growth mindset — the desire to truly improve my life. Perhaps I should be more open to AI manifesting! But also, I am happy to just use my imagination, and tend the one scraggly cherry tomato plant in my yard.