The Chatbotification of Gurus and Knowledge Creators

If you can’t afford a face to face conference led by Tony Robbins, have no fear, a chatbot is here! Self help gurus are turning to AI to create bots of themselves, trained on their podcasts, talks, books, coaching frameworks and more to deliver 24/7 advice to customers. It’s way cheaper, more accessible, and I think we will start to see more people fall into the kind of self improvement obsessions that proved to me the existence of black holes.

At one point in my life, about my senior year of college, I was absolutely lost in this black hole. It might have started with The Defining Decade or the Daily Stoic devotionals I was doing every morning, but wherever it started, it kept going for quite a while. I was determined to become a better version of myself and didn’t stop to look at the costs or how far I came or how it impacted those around me. To a point, I still am a bit self help pilled, but at least I’m marked safe from listening to David Goggins videos on repeat daily on the treadmill.

Now, AI is turning years of content into a two-way street with “expert” interaction available to all. It’s no longer just consuming content. I probably would have been lost forever if this was around back then.

Behind many of these chatbots is Delphi, a startup that builds AI chatbots trained on a creator’s books, talks, and other IP, allowing fans to interact with a personalized voice-and-text version of that person. It powers products like relationship coach Matthew Hussey’s “Matthew AI” and spirituality and self-empowerment author Gabby Bernstein’s “Gabby AI”. Back in June it announced its $16M funding round led by Sequoia Capital.

Delphi is also the company behind lennybot.com, making it clear that the chatbotification of experts isn’t just showing up in the guru world. Lenny Rachitsky now has a bot trained on his podcast transcripts that lets users ask questions and get synthesized answers pulled directly from past episodes, quotes, and guest insights. I’m pretty excited to try this out.

AI shifts value from publishing more content to giving people instant, conversational access to an expert’s accumulated thinking.

Three predictions from the chatbotification of gurus and knowledge creators:

• Consultants will be less valuable. If a chatbot can be used with information based on the best of the best, then people don’t have any use for the affordable consultant they had to settle with.

• Fake chatbots that claim to have the knowledge of industry leaders will continue to grow, despite having no affiliation. More lawsuits will follow.

• Self-help black holes will defy odds and become even deeper. More people will be jumping on the bandwagons of Tony Robbins and alike.

Tech News

Media

• Netflix begins its move into podcasting with a live Bill Simmons show on Sunday night and plans to add dozens of podcasts, including Pardon My Take, My Favorite Murder, and The Breakfast Club, over the coming months. Netflix treats the rollout as a low-risk test because it wants to see how customers react before committing more money, spending mostly six-to-low-seven figures per show and paying Barstool Sports more than $10M a year. (Bloomberg)

  • Also, The Pete Davidson Show, a new video podcast, will be exclusively available on Netflix starting Jan. 30. (Netflix)

  

• TikTok is introducing paywalled content for users. Remember, YouTube already allows creators to paywall videos using the membership feature, and Spotify has a Patreon integration. I predict TikTok will move into podcasts soon after announcing Series, which lets creators put up to 80 videos behind a paywall. In my mind, these could be short podcasts or talking-head videos, similar to the “Who TF Did I Marry” series. (The Verge)

• Related to the main story above: Ever think, “What did Lenny say about [topic] six months ago?” You’re not alone. After Lenny made his podcast transcript public, some fans popped off. (X)

  

  • Lazar Jovanovic created a site where you can ask Lenny’s transcript anything about product, growth, and leadership to get answers synthesized from his podcast transcripts, which includes direct quotes and guests citations. (X)

  • Claire Vo used Devin.ai to process Lenny’s Podcast transcripts, convert them into clean Markdown files, add episode metadata, and publish them to a public GitHub repo so anyone can search them or run AI analysis on them. (X)

Spotify Roundup

• Spotify opening a studio in West Hollywood and announced a suite of podcast changes designed to compete more effectively with YouTube. (Spotify)

• Creators say Spotify pays up to 2x as much as YouTube for video podcasts as Spotify pushes deeper into video and courts YouTubers with higher payouts. Spotify rolled out a new API for third-party hosting integration, enabled swappable host-read ads, and lowered eligibility thresholds to expand its video podcast partner program. (Bloomberg)

Apple Roundup

• Apple picked Google’s Gemini to power its AI features, including a major Siri upgrade expected later this year. Apple said it determined Google’s technology provided the most capable foundation, and the multiyear partnership uses Google’s Gemini and cloud technology for Apple Foundation Models and runs the models on Apple devices and Apple’s private cloud compute. (CNBC)

  

  Elon had some thoughts.

• Apple announced Apple Creator Studio, a subscription that bundles Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro on Mac and iPad, Motion, Compressor and MainStage, and costs $12.99 a month. (9to5Mac)

Work life

• Salesforce rolled out a new AI-powered Slackbot that can understand conversations, find information, and take actions like scheduling meetings or drafting documents directly inside Slack. (ZDNET)

• Anthropic launched Cowork, a new AI agent built for non-technical users that can take on real tasks like organizing files, drafting reports, and compiling spreadsheets with minimal oversight. Notably, Anthropic says Cowork was built almost entirely using its own Claude Code tool. (Mashable)

• Meta laid off more than 1K employees from its Reality Labs division, the same division that it lost more than $70B since 2021. (Engadget)

Money Moves

• Did… did Eric Adams just… perform a rug pull? Eric Adams launched and promoted the NYC Token as a post-mayoral project he said would fund charitable causes and fight antisemitism. The token surged to nearly a $600M valuation before crashing more than 75% after wallets linked to the token’s creation withdrew roughly $2.5M in liquidity, with about $1M unaccounted for.(Decrypt)

  

  NBC NEW YORK

• WebAI raised high double-digit millions at a $2.5B pre-money valuation. The Austin-based company said it runs AI on devices to bypass the cloud and increase privacy, performance and energy efficiency. (Axios)

• Nvidia plans to invest $1B over five years in a new laboratory with Eli Lilly to speed the use of AI in the pharmaceutical industry. (Bloomberg)

• Peter Thiel donated $3M to a committee opposing a proposed California wealth tax. He gave the money to the California Business Roundtable’s political committee on Dec 29, and the group said it will act as a lead backer of a campaign to defeat the measure that opponents estimate could cost more than $75M. (New York Times)

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