How Fitbit Wants AI to Help You Reach Your Fitness Goals

From CNET: Anyone who exercises regularly -- or at least tries to -- knows that every day is different. After an exhausting work trip, for example, you probably aren't as ready for a workout as you would be after getting plenty of sleep over the weekend. Or perhaps you had a particularly intense day at the gym on Monday and still aren't fully recovered by Wednesday.

Google's Fitbit is hoping AI can help with scenarios like these as it explores bringing the buzzy technology to its fitness app. Fitbit co-founder James Park, who is leaving the company due to a reorganization of Google's hardware division, introduced this idea October by announcing Fitbit Labs. The upcoming program will use AI to provide deeper health insights, such as answering questions about why your run may have been harder today than it was yesterday. But Ajay Surie, group product manager at Google, shared additional details about how generative AI will influence the Fitbit app more broadly.

According to Surie, the company is looking at how generative AI can be used for providing personalized activity and exercise recommendations that are specific to the actual user. It's another signal that tech giants are looking for ways to infuse generative AI, or AI that can answer questions or create content when prompted after being trained on data, into the tech gadgets we use everyday.

"We also see a huge potential for AI to help us drive the right recommendations for the goals you want to set," he said. "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."

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