Against the recommendations of experts and professionals, millions of people use AI chatbots for emotional support and advice. These are often people who are in vulnerable times in their lives, perhaps unable to pay out of pocket for the type of help and support they need. The self-help industry is apparently aware of this trend, has seen this demographic of people in search of help, and collectively said, “You know, we can probably make some cash off these people.”
The Wall Street Journal reports that there is a trend of gurus creating chatbots that replicate their style and voice, allowing people to “talk” to an AI-powered recreation of them to get “personalized” advice in the style of their life coach of choice. The bots are loaded up with all of the experts’ books, lectures, and interviews, and can spit out answers to questions in the style of the author. All you have to do is pay a monthly subscription to access it all.
How much it’ll cost you depends on the expert. Per WSJ, dating coach Matthew Hussey charges people $39 per month for “Matthew AI,” which has reportedly already had over one million conversations, and users have spent 1.9 million minutes talking to it via voice chat. Tony Robbins will hit you for $99 per month for his life coach bot—but you can get started with an introductory rate of $0.99 for the first 14 days! Spiritual teacher David Ghiyam offers a sliding scale option so people can talk to an AI version of him for just $1 per month, which certainly beats paying his private coaching rate of $15,000 per hour.
Whether any of these tools actually work for the people paying for the services, you’d have to ask them. Self-help can have its place, though the industry is undoubtedly filled with bunk research and bad advice. But one thing is for sure: It’s working great for the gurus.
Hussey told the Wall Street Journal, “I literally can’t do what it is doing,” which is true in the sense that he can’t speak to people at the scale that his chatbot can. But it’s also literally not doing what he is doing. Whatever you may think of the validity of a dating coach, the selling point is getting personalized advice based on your situation and their experience. A chatbot simulates that, sure, but it actually doesn’t know anything about you, your relationship, or relationships broadly. It is a chatbot. It can sound like Hussey and recreate Hussey’s words, but it doesn’t know what any of them mean.
Gabby Bernstein, a spiritual teacher who has come under fire in the past for pseudo-scientific claims, charges $199 a year for her Gabby AI, made the case that the chatbot is effectively offering herself to the world. “It’s backed with 20 years of books, lectures, workshops and meditations. So it’s me, it’s my message, and only I could control that,” she told WSJ. Though, notably, she doesn’t control that. She’s turned it over to Delphi AI, a venture capital-backed startup that has created an entire micro-industry out of selling self-help AI as a service.
Bernstein does perhaps sum up the whole situation best, albeit likely by accident. “If I don’t do it, someone else is going to do it in a way that’s not in alignment with my truth,” she told WSJ. You could simplify that to “If I don’t do it, someone else is going to get these people’s money,” and it wouldn’t fundamentally change the meaning. Need proof? Tony Robbins sued a company that made a chatbot using his likeness shortly after launching his own AI app.
