… I don’t necessarily see this lack of AI health news as a bad thing. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: The vast majority of AI health features are doo-doo dogshit, tedious to train, and require so much of your personal data to be at all effective that it feels ominous. …
… Personalized health is the holy grail of the wearable and health industry right now. Every new wearable launch, optimized metric, and AI feature is hurtling toward this goal. I’m no fortune teller. I don’t know how Google’s health gambits will play out. …
… They only have 2 large tiles available and I can’t just scroll down to see everything.” The landing page has a small section up top showing steps and some other basic stats, but part of the app’s main page is now reserved for recent activity updates and chatty notes from Google’s AI health coach. …
… The Today and Health tabs are getting charts for hourly step goals, as well, and a new 24-hour total sleep overview will show both main sleep and naps. Google’s AI coach is one of the most divisive new features. …
… And yet, personalized health features are rolling out now. For some people, that might mean a relatively straightforward experience because they don’t have particularly complicated health. …
… Would I have to explain the stresses of my life in order to get that personalized context? This was never an issue with the old Fitbit. Even as I appreciate how advanced this category has become, how health features are genuinely lifesaving, there is a part of me that longs for how it was. …
… That’s where Google Health and its AI coach come in. My general stance on consumer-focused AI health and fitness features, as I’ve written several times in Optimizer, is that they’re shitty, stapled-on cash grabs that do little more than regurgitate googleable facts. …
… So, both Whoop and Oura pivoted toward more innovative health features. Oura doubled down on detecting early signs of illness and estimating cardiovascular age. Whoop was one of the first wearable companies to add AI coaching in 2023. …
… Lab uploads will allow Oura users to directly import test results into the app and chat with Oura’s AI chatbot about the findings. As always, an obligatory reminder that most AI health features are capable of hallucinations and poor advice, so it’s a bad idea to think this can replace your doctor. …
… For the majority of us, AI health has been, thus far, a craptacular experience of regurgitated metric summaries, hallucinations, and tedious hand-holding. We shouldn’t necessarily conflate AI tools for researchers and consumer AI health features, but it’s extremely human to do so. …