Who owns your AI coach? The questions to ask before you build

Picture the day you cancel.

You have run an AI coach for two years. It knows your frameworks, and your clients talk to it every week. Then you decide to switch platforms and ask for an export. That is the day most people find out what they actually own.

Here is the short answer. You should own your method, the material you upload, your clients’ conversation data and, if you paid for a custom build, the code. Whether you do depends on the contract.

The clone tools I read leave your content with you but keep the clone on their platform. The big AI model providers give API customers ownership of inputs and outputs. That last part hides a detail that catches a lot of people. I’ll come back to it.

What the terms actually say

I read the terms of three products coaches use for AI, and of two model providers, on 11 October 2026. Here is each one in plain words. The links are at the end.

Delphi keeps the clone

Under its Creator Terms (updated 16 January 2026), you keep all rights in the content you upload. Delphi keeps all rights in its service and in Digital Minds. A Digital Mind built from your content is provided only to you.

When the agreement ends, you stop using the Digital Mind and Delphi deletes your content. You can ask for it to be stored for six months first. I found no right to export.

Coachvox lets you own what your AI writes

You keep all rights to your uploads, and Coachvox may use them only to run, maintain and improve your AI model. Its homepage says your content is never used to train wider AI models. You own what your AI generates.

For client conversations, Coachvox and you are joint controllers under data protection law. After your subscription ends, it may delete your account data no earlier than 90 days later, with 14 days’ notice. Export is mentioned only for when the service changes materially or shuts down.

Kajabi keeps your agent on your site

Content you owned before uploading stays yours. In return, you give Kajabi a worldwide, transferable, sub-licensable license to use it to run, improve, promote and evaluate its services. That is a broad license. The terms don’t say whether Kajabi trains AI on your content.

Backups are your job, and your site goes offline when your account ends. An Expert Agent belongs to the site it was created on. It can’t be moved.

OpenAI and Anthropic give ownership to the customer

OpenAI doesn’t use data sent to its API to train its models by default. It keeps abuse-monitoring logs for up to 30 days, and eligible customers can get zero data retention. Its enterprise privacy page says you own your inputs and outputs where the law allows.

Anthropic’s Commercial Terms say the customer keeps all rights to its inputs and owns its outputs. Anthropic may not train models on customer content from its services.

The detail that catches people

Here is the detail I promised. Both providers give ownership to the customer. The customer is whoever holds the API account.

If your developer runs your coach on their own OpenAI or Anthropic account, the developer is the customer. Not you.

Whoever holds the API account is the customer. Make sure it’s you, from the first day.

Setting the account up in your name is easy before the build starts. Moving it later is awkward. So ask on day one.

Questions that protect your method

Your method is the frameworks, names, exercises and scoring rules that make your coaching recognizably yours. Most contracts say you keep the IP you bring. What matters is the license you give the vendor in return.

• Does the contract say, in writing, that the method, its names and its exercises stay mine?
• What license do you get to my material? Is it only for running my coach, or also for improving your product, promoting it or passing it to others?
• How long does that license last, and does it end when I cancel?
• Can you show my coach on public pages or use it in your marketing?
• If you build for a competitor of mine next month, what stops my scripts and rubric from ending up in their coach?
• If the coach uses my voice or likeness, what exactly did I consent to, and can I withdraw it?

Read the documents closely, because one company can have two. Delphi’s general Terms of Use describe a perpetual license to user submissions. Its Creator Terms, which cover people building a Digital Mind, grant a license for providing the service and state no term. Know which one you are signing.

Delphi’s Creator Terms also let it feature a creator’s Digital Mind on public pages of its service. A good answer to the marketing question is short and in writing.

Questions that protect your content

Content is your lessons, transcripts, books, scripts and notes. Two things can go wrong. It gets used for something you didn’t agree to, or it stays somewhere after you leave.

• Is my content used to train any model, yours or a provider’s? Get the answer in writing, because some terms simply don’t say.
• Which model providers see my content, and under whose account?
• Where is it stored, and can I get a list of everything that has been uploaded?
• If I delete a lesson, is it also removed from the index the coach searches?
• What happens to copies in backups? Several of the terms I read, Anthropic’s and Delphi’s among them, allow backup copies to stay after a deletion.
• If I upload a published book, does my publishing contract allow it? (It matters for book companion apps for authors.)

Questions that protect your clients

This is where most of the risk sits, because this data belongs to your clients. People tell a coach about their health, money, marriage and work. They assume you are the only one reading.

• Who is the data controller for client conversations: you, the vendor or both? Coachvox, for example, names itself and the creator as joint controllers.
• Who can read transcripts? Can I control which of my coaches sees which clients, and can your staff see them?
• How long are conversations kept, and can a client have theirs deleted?
• Can I export transcripts, scores and progress in a format another tool can read?
• What happens when a client mentions self-harm, abuse or a crisis, and who gets alerted?
• If practice calls are recorded, how is consent collected? Some US states require everyone on a recorded call to agree.
• If I coach in a regulated field such as health, finance or real estate, which rules is the coach built to follow, and who signs that off?

Questions about what makes it sound like you

An AI coach is more than the model underneath it. The real work is the instructions, your rubric written as scoring rules, the search index over your material and the test conversations. That is what makes it sound like you. It is also what contracts most often forget.

• Whose API account runs the coach? If it is the vendor’s, who owns the outputs under the provider’s terms?
• Do I get the instructions, scoring rules and test conversations as files I can keep?
• Can I switch model provider later, or is the coach tied to one?
• If you fine-tune a model on my material, who owns the fine-tuned model, and can it be moved?
• Will you tell me before you change the model, and test my coach on the new one first?

Questions about the code

These apply to a custom build. With a subscription tool you rent the software. That is fine, as long as you know it is the deal.

• Do I get the full source code, in a repository I own?
• Is any part of it your own engine, licensed to me? If so, what does that license allow, and what happens to it if your company closes?
• Are the hosting, database, domain and AI provider accounts in my name?
• Is it documented well enough that another developer could take it over?
• Which third-party services and libraries does it depend on, and under what licenses?

Ask about leaving on the first day

It costs nothing to ask before you start. It can be expensive to find out in the month you want to leave.

• If I cancel, what keeps running, what switches off, and when?
• What can I export, in what format, and for how long after I cancel?
• When is my content deleted, and will you confirm the deletion in writing?
• Is there a fee or a notice period to leave?
• If I move to another course platform, does the coach move with me?

The products I read answer these differently. Delphi deletes your content after the agreement ends, unless you ask for six months of storage. Coachvox may delete your data no earlier than 90 days after your subscription ends. Kajabi takes your site offline and leaves backups to you.

For a subscription product, none of that is unusual. It is worth knowing before you put two years of client conversations into a tool.

How we handle it

On our builds, the code and data are yours from day one. Everything runs in accounts you control: hosting, database and the AI provider. So yes, the API account is in your name. Our fixed-quote pricing works the same way.

AI usage is billed by the provider to your own account. We take no revenue share and charge no seat fees. The code is written up so another developer could take it over. If you stop working with us, the coach keeps running.

We use AI provider APIs that don’t train on your data by default. During the free audit, you choose what material to share. If we don’t go ahead, we delete it.

We built the full ResultPal platform for author Dr. Pelè. He sells it to organizations. Its AI coach helps people use his teaching.

Back to the day you cancel. If you asked these questions before you signed, that day is boring. You know what you can take, what gets deleted and when. Nothing surprises you.

Comparing prices as well as terms? My guide to what an AI coach costs has dated prices and three-year math, and our coaching page shows what we build.

Sources

• Delphi Creator Terms of Use: https://www.delphi.co/terms-creator
• Delphi Terms of Use: https://www.delphi.co/terms
• Coachvox AI Terms and Conditions: https://coachvox.ai/terms-and-conditions/
• Coachvox AI homepage FAQ: https://coachvox.ai/
• Kajabi Terms of Service: https://www.kajabi.com/policies/terms
• Kajabi Help Center, Expert Agents overview: https://help.kajabi.com/en/articles/17174557-expert-agents-overview
• OpenAI, Data controls in the OpenAI platform: https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/your-data
• OpenAI, Enterprise privacy: https://openai.com/enterprise-privacy/
• Anthropic Commercial Terms of Service: https://www.anthropic.com/legal/commercial-terms

Written by

Shahzaib Shoaib — Founder and lead engineer

Profile →