He asked ChatGPT for his birth mother. Minutes later, her name.

Avtar Singh spent two decades searching for his birth mother with almost nothing to go on. He had a first name, Savinder, and a nickname his grandmother once gave him, Titu. He would not do a DNA test, having spent his career as a chartered accountant. "They can sell it," he told The Guardian. "If they see something in my DNA, that affects my kids." Awake early in the south of France on May 8, after finishing cancer treatment, he tried ChatGPT instead. He fed it guesses: a woman roughly 87 to 97, likely given the middle name Kaur, connected to India, Africa and the U.K. Minutes later it returned Savinder Kaur Nagi, born 1936 in Kisumu, Kenya, and cited a tribute written by a London jewelry designer, Nicci Dhamu, about a mother who died in December 2024. Nicci had searched two years with no name. "No one's going to call themselves Titu on LinkedIn, are they?" she said. When they spoke, she asked, "Titu, is that you?" Both started crying. He was in London within days. Neither wants a DNA test to confirm it.