By Conor Grant
This is an edition of The Future of Everything newsletter, a look at how innovation and technology are transforming the way we live, work and play. If you're not subscribed, sign up here .
People are turning to AI to solve all kinds of problems, treating chatbots as personal assistants and even therapists. Now, self-help stars are cashing in on the trend.
This week, Sara Ashley O'Brien reports on Tony Robbins, Gabby Bernstein and others who have expanded their empires with AI chatbots that promise personal advice.
In an age where it has become harder than ever for prominent people to control the use of their own image and likeness, more are now opting to put out their own AI chatbots.
Robbins, the motivational speaker and life coach, unveiled his AI coaching app in February, based on his talks, books and interviews, for $99 a month. (He later sued companies that used his name and image for chatbots without authorization.)
Author and relationship coach Matthew Hussey runs "Matthew AI," a voice-and-text chatbot that talks to people in his voice for $39 a month. Matthew AI -- which is available 24/7 and speaks in dozens of languages -- has had over a million conversations since it launched in 2024, Hussey said.
Minutes users have spent on the "phone" with the Matthew AI chatbot
Hussey and other self-help stars have worked with a startup called Delphi to create chatbots in their own likeness. The company says its bots have guardrails to protect both users and the likeness of the creators. If a user indicates that they're thinking about self-harm, the chatbots will direct them to contact 911 or a suicide hotline. Creators can also set their own personal boundaries -- such as forbidding questions about their personal lives.
-- Matthew McConaughey is trademarking himself to fight AI misuse. (Read)
-- AI chatbots are linked to psychosis, say doctors. (Read)
-- Patients are diagnosing themselves with home tests, devices and chatbots.
(Read)
🤔 Would you seek advice from a self-help star's chatbot? Why or why not? Send me your thoughts, questions and predictions at future@wsj.com (if you're reading this in your inbox, you can just hit reply).
More of What's Next: Workers Train Their AI Replacements; Best of the Bots; U.S.-Made Copper
Job seekers are getting paid to train AI to do their old roles. The buzzy startup Mercor employs thousands of white-collar contractors, who use their subject-area expertise to help refine the output of the large language models that power AI tools.
Here are the highlights from the tech's biggest gadget show. Personal tech columnist Nicole Nguyen offers her picks for the most interesting, potentially useful inventions to come out of this year's CES in Las Vegas, including smart bricks, ultrabright TVs and lots and lots of bots.
Amazon is buying the first new U.S. copper output in more than a decade. Rio Tinto's deal with Amazon Web Services is a vote of confidence for its Nuton venture, which uses bacteria and acid to extract copper from ore that was previously uneconomical to process.
OpenAI forged a multibillion-dollar computing partnership with Cerebras Systems, a startup that says its chips can run AI models faster than industry leader Nvidia. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is a personal investor in Cerebras.
Future Feedback
Last week, we reported on recycling companies that are using AI to find valuable commodities in our trash. Readers shared their thoughts on whether AI will change how America manages its waste:
-- "In the years to come (and probably soon), I think AI might just be the
technology that enables curbside recycling to fulfill the mostly empty
promises that have been made by true believers for the past 40 years. AI
never gets bored or distracted, isn't subject to repetitive stress
injuries nor is it prone to cuts and gangrenous infections from
mishandling sharps in the waste stream." -- Jonathan Kanner, Mississippi
-- "This isn't necessarily a direct answer to your question, but: Why don't
waste haulers incentivize me to be the sorter instead of charging me to
sort my garbage?" -- Curt Ruhlman, Missouri
-- "As long as America makes productive use of simple landfills and the
methane energy released by those landfills, that's the easiest and most
cost effective way to go. There's no AI needed there. I think it's a more
immediate challenge to fabricate and deploy biodegradable plastics that
comprise much of those landfills." -- Jeremy Raines, Florida
(Responses have been condensed and edited.)
Elsewhere in the Future
-- Meet the new biologists treating LLMs like aliens. (MIT Technology Review) -- How WhatsApp took over the global conversation. (The New Yorker) -- Here comes the advertising in AI chatbots. (The Washington Post)
About Us
Thanks for reading The Future of Everything. We cover the innovation and tech transforming the way we live, work and play. This newsletter was written by Conor Grant. Get in touch with us at future@wsj.com. Got a tip for us? Here's how to submit.
See more from The Future of Everything at wsj.com/future-of-everything.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 16, 2026 11:55 ET (16:55 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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