What happens when a health coach's AI clone recommends a supplement - and that same influencer earns an affiliate commission when you buy it?
That's the scenario Onix is building toward. The startup, detailed in a Wired report, is pitching itself as a "Substack of bots" - a platform where health and wellness creators build AI versions of themselves that chat with paying subscribers around the clock.
The mechanics are simple: influencers train chatbots on their content and persona, set a subscription price, and Onix handles the rest. Followers get on-demand access to personalized advice without waiting for a live coaching session.
The Conflict-of-Interest Problem
The financial incentives here point in the wrong direction. A single chatbot conversation could dispense nutrition advice, answer follow-up questions, and steer the user toward a product the influencer sells - all while the human is asleep. Onix hasn't addressed how it plans to handle disclosure, liability, or what happens when an AI clone gives genuinely harmful health guidance.
This isn't hypothetical risk. The wellness creator space already operates with minimal accountability - no licensing requirements, no credential verification, no consequences for bad advice. An AI that runs 24/7 and never gets tired or second-guesses itself makes the existing problems worse, not better.
From a pure business model standpoint, it's coherent. Creators are already selling courses, newsletters, and paid communities. A chatbot is more scalable than all of those combined, with lower marginal cost per subscriber. Tools like Chatbase already let businesses build similar bots - Onix is applying that model to individual creators with a revenue-share structure.
The regulatory collision is coming. In most jurisdictions, personalized health and nutrition advice from unlicensed practitioners is already legally murky. Delivering it through an automated system to thousands of paying users simultaneously pushes it further into legally questionable territory. The FTC has increasingly scrutinized influencer marketing disclosures - an AI that can't distinguish between giving advice and selling products will draw attention.