AI as a life coach: experts share what works, what doesn’t and what to look out for

It’s becoming more common for people to use AI chatbots for personal guidance – but this doesn’t come without risks

If you’re like a lot of people, you’ve probably ditched your new year resolutions by now. Setting goals is hard; keeping them is harder – and failure can bring about icky feelings about yourself.

This year, in an effort to game the system and tilt the scales toward success, some people used AI for their 2026 resolutions. It’s the latest step in an ongoing trend: in September 2025, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, released findings showing that using the AI chatbot for personal guidance is very common.

The company’s interpretation of this was that “people value ChatGPT most as an adviser rather than only for task completion.”

But just because you can ask AI for life advice, should you? And is there an art to it? Here’s what experts say are the dos and don’ts.