How Fitbit Wants AI to Help You Reach Your Fitness Goals

Anyone who workouts repeatedly —  or at the very least tries to — is aware of that day by day is totally different. After an exhausting work journey, for instance, you in all probability aren’t as prepared for a exercise as you’ll be after getting loads of sleep over the weekend. Or maybe you had a very intense day on the health club on Monday and nonetheless aren’t absolutely recovered by Wednesday.Google’s Fitbit is hoping AI may help with situations like these because it explores bringing the buzzy know-how to its health app. Fitbit co-founder James Park, who’s leaving the corporate on account of a reorganization of Google’s {hardware} division, launched this concept October by saying Fitbit Labs. The upcoming program will use AI to offer deeper well being insights, equivalent to answering questions on why your run could have been tougher at present than it was yesterday. But Ajay Surie, group product supervisor at Google, shared further particulars about how generative AI will affect the Fitbit app extra broadly.Read extra: Samsung’s Galaxy S24 Ultra Could Be Doing So Much More With AIAccording to Surie, the corporate is how generative AI can be utilized for offering customized exercise and train suggestions which can be particular to the precise consumer. It’s one other sign that tech giants are in search of methods to infuse generative AI, or AI that may reply questions or create content material when prompted after being educated on information, into the tech devices we use on a regular basis. “We also see a huge potential for AI to help us drive the right recommendations for the goals you want to set,” he mentioned. “Because one of the biggest problems that we see in health, and I have this problem too, is getting users to stay focused and sticking with what they’re trying to achieve.” Watch this: 2023’s Top Smartwatches and Wearables of the Year
07:00 Surie referenced train targets as a possible instance. The World Health Organization recommends that adults get 150 minutes of bodily exercise every week. But that may be difficult for individuals who are new to train, whereas skilled athletes may have the next purpose. He sees “huge potential” in AI to assist set the precise targets.”We want to help people keep track of their goals and stay on track, but also adjust their goals where relevant,” he mentioned.Another potential instance entails taking a consumer’s present state into consideration when making suggestions or offering recommendation. That would imply with the ability to tailor every day steerage primarily based on the quantity of sleep you’ve got had not too long ago or whether or not you’ve got been sick. Or it might imply offering suggestions for sustaining a coaching routine even whenever you’ve had a nasty relaxation day. However, these are simply examples meant for example the sorts of options Fitbit hopes to ultimately present.”Those are the types of things we’d like to do over time,” Surie mentioned. “This is our vision, and it’s going to take time to get there.”Part of why Fitbit redesigned its app final 12 months was to set the stage for Fitbit Labs by making the app extra customizable and private. The Today tab, for instance, now has a selected “focus,” which is basically a bunch of statistics that sit close to the highest of the display screen for prioritizing particular targets, like being extra energetic or sleeping higher. But many longtime Fitbit customers felt the redesign hampered relatively than helped their health ambitions. Following the brand new app’s debut within the fall, Fitbit’s group boards have been stuffed with destructive feedback from customers about how the brand new look made it laborious to search out sure metrics or export information amongst different points. Fitbit additionally eliminated beloved social options like challenges and teams final 12 months.Fitbit addressed sure complaints by re-adding some lacking options, just like the battery proportion for a linked Fitbit system within the Today tab and step streak counts within the iOS app. But new consumer complaints are nonetheless surfacing, with feedback as current as early February current within the Fitbit group discussion board on the time of writing. “The process the team followed was, we wanted to really react as quickly as we could,” Surie mentioned when requested about how the Fitbit staff dealt with the suggestions concerning the redesign. “So we engage quite heavily with the community of users in our forums to sort of listen to their feedback, try to give them a sense of what we were going to do and then follow up as quickly as we could in terms of getting things turned around.”Read extra: Google VP: Here’s How AI Will Slowly But Surely Take Over Your TelephoneFitbit’s ambitions are one other signal that generative AI is making its strategy to well being monitoring devices, following the know-how’s affect on smartphones, productiveness software program and engines like google. Apple, for instance, is rumored to be creating an AI-powered well being coach that might present options primarily based on Apple Watch information, in accordance with Bloomberg. Samsung can also be contemplating creating some sort of digital assistant that may assist customers navigate well being information within the Samsung Health app.”We think the concept of a digital system that helps you to navigate and understand the context and navigate them to solutions are going to be necessary,” Hon Pak, vp and head of the digital well being staff for the cellular expertise enterprise at Samsung Electronics, mentioned in a earlier CNET interview. “And what form factor that’s going to be is to be determined. And it may vary based on person to person, right? Some people just probably want audio; some people want a video on the TV.”Fitbit Labs shall be out there just for Premium subscribers when it will definitely launches in 2024. Surie could not say whether or not that can all the time be the case, however he did point out that the corporate will consider which options ought to scale past the paywall on a case-by-case foundation. The purpose behind Fitbit Labs is to check sure options and gather suggestions from customers earlier than rolling them out broadly, doubtlessly offering a glimpse into Fitbit’s future.”Throughout this, we obviously want to make sure that we do this responsibly, especially in the health space,” Surie mentioned. “It’s one thing to go to Netflix and watch a bad movie. And it’s a totally other thing to get a recommendation that is relevant to health and get inaccurate advice.”Editors’ notice: CNET is utilizing an AI engine to assist create some tales. For extra, see this publish.