A Michigan woman says she owes her six-figure lottery win to a little artificial intelligence.

Tammy Carvey, 45, of Livingston County, told the Michigan Lottery this week that she used ChatGPT to pick the numbers that earned her a $100,000 Powerball prize in the Sept. 6 drawing. “I only play Powerball when the jackpot gets up there,” she said, explaining that she’d bought her ticket when the prize pool climbed past $1 billion.

Like many players who turn to birthdays, anniversaries, or quick-picks, Carvey wanted a different kind of luck. So she opened ChatGPT and asked the AI to suggest a set of Powerball numbers. Then she played them.

“When I checked the winning numbers, I saw I matched four white balls and the Powerball and knew I had to have won something,” she told lottery officials. “Google told me it was a $50,000 prize, so that’s what I thought I’d won.”

It wasn’t until Carvey logged into her Michigan Lottery account that she realized she had also selected the Power Play option, which doubled her prize to $100,000. “My husband and I were in total disbelief,” she said.

Carvey’s win is part of a broader cultural moment — one where artificial intelligence has slipped from the abstract to the everyday. People are using chatbots to write emails, plan meals, design tattoos, and, increasingly, make decisions that once belonged purely to luck.

Statistically, AI can’t outsmart a lottery — Powerball odds are one in 292 million — but stories like Carvey’s tap into the same human hope that drives people to play in the first place.

For Carvey, though, the story ends in a simpler kind of relief. She says she plans to use her winnings to pay off her home and save the rest. “We’re just grateful,” she said.

Whether her lucky streak was fate, math, or machine magic, one thing is clear — ChatGPT just earned its first unofficial win in the Powerball.