Apple is said to be developing an AI-powered health and fitness coaching service that will use data from your best Apple Watch to make recommendations to improve your sleep, adjust your eating habits, and formulate recommendations based on your stats. Fit your exercise program.
The new coaching service is tentatively codenamed Quartz Bloomberg and industry analyst Mark Gurman (opens in a new tab), although it’s said to be in its early stages and won’t be on your wrist until 2024. Therefore, it is unlikely to be shown at Apple’s WWDC 2023 conference in June.
The service will reportedly require a separate subscription, just like other Apple services like Apple Fitness Plus. The AI interface may interact with Fitness Plus – based on your current training, sleep and recovery metrics, the AI may recommend specific Apple Fitness Plus workouts to you.
For example, if you run regularly, an AI might recommend running yoga. As a result, we can see a large number of “master subscriptions” for the two health-based services in the pipeline. However, this is all speculation.
The bottom line is that if the AI works well, it learns how to better tailor training plans based on your training history. The longer Quartz uses your data to recommend workouts to you, the less likely you are to switch to a competing product, since that would mean effectively starting over.
The report also said AI will or could be used to “track emotions”. What this actually means in practice is up in the air.
Analysis: Not a new idea, but AI fitness worries me
Getting recommended workouts right on your watch isn’t a new idea—the best Garmin watches have been doing this for years, and it works well. However, the workouts Garmin recommends are based on the Firstbeat Analytics algorithm. While complex, it’s not artificial intelligence, and it can’t “learn” — it can only interpret data.
I’ve written about this before, but I would be very hesitant to follow fitness advice from an AI service. Amazfit is trying a fitness-centric approach powered by ChatGPT, which I think is a dangerous idea. Artificial intelligence collecting data from users and providing fitness advice without the supervision of health experts should cause concern.
What would happen if AI recommended potentially dangerous workouts or harmful dietary choices? Aside from something very broad, like “eat more protein to build muscle,” how can it satisfy everyone? If Apple is looking at this as a potential feature or subscription service, they should be very careful.
Another thing that seemed odd to me was the note about “tracking emotions”. Amazon tried a similar Tone feature on its Amazon Halo device, which tracks your voice and interprets your mood. Will Apple’s functionality be similar? Time will prove everything.