Is HR ready for AI coaching and mentoring?

It’s been undergoing thorough testing since early February, and if everything goes to plan, it’s officially launching in June. And when that happens? Well, let’s just say this – it could be mark the start of a bold new direction: AI properly reaching the realms of coaching and mentoring.

Ever since ChatGPT burst onto the scene only a few short years ago, the ability to have short prompt text-to-text coaching has been eminently possible. Mentors – whose value is based applying their accumulated wisdom – have (quite rightly) been nervously looking over their shoulders to see when mentoring threatens to become an AI, rather than real-person intervention. But this June could be the moment they’ve all been fearing, with the arrival of ‘Aimy’ (‘My AI’ transposed) – what’s billed as an AI ‘coach-bot’ that helps people uncover what behavioural scientist, and developer of the product, Laurel McKenzie from CoachHub calls “their own wisdoms.”

She says: “With Aimy, employees can set goals, discuss a challenge, or role-play a scenario. It’s been built with a solutions-focused coaching methodology, which means it follows a framework as it interacts with someone.” She adds: “While it doesn’t tell you what to do [neither does a human mentor], it will set behavioural guidance around the situation being discussed (it’s voice or text-activated), and it also learns from the coachee, and builds people’s skills that way.”

A brave new world?

Aimy is amongst the first of a growing list of entrants in the AI coaching and mentoring space. Also launched recently was AI-enabled coaching and mentoring solution, Electric Conversations, where employees can engage with AI-powered avatars to practice challenging conversations (such as performance review objectives, career discussions or managing conflict resolution). Here the avatars review and feedback performance-scores based using insights and best practices built from professional coaches certified to European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) standards. Meanwhile, at last month’s Learning Technologies UK 2025 show, HR practitioners also saw the launch of ‘Guru,’ an AI agent that teaches, challenges, and adapts to an individual’s capabilities and skills gaps, to deliver verified expert knowledge and expertise. In short, it’s interesting times – potentially blowing apart the idea that coaching and mentoring is a person-to-person activity rooted in applying a career-full of experience and insights to unlock other people’s potential.

But is HR really ready for a brave new world where technology takes the lead in what has always been a ‘human’ experience?