… 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. …
… 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. …
… 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. …
… Product: Fitbit Air | https://www.amazon.com/Google-Fitbit-Air-Screenless-Personalized/dp/B0GTMVZB39/?th=1&tag=theverge02-20, https://bestbuy.7tiv.net/c/482924/614286/10014?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bestbuy.com%2Fproduct%2Fgoogle-fitbit-air-screenless-fitness-and-health-tracking-works-with-android-and-io… …
… A new update to the Google Home app in version 4.20 also adds new “System Health alerts” if your Nest thermostat detects issues with your HVAC, which sounds like a Gemini-connected update to the previously existing Google Nest System Health Monitoring, and improved support for Matter switches.
… So far, I’ve been skeptical about AI fitness features, but I’m cautiously curious about what I’ve seen from Google. The gist is the health coach will act more like a personal trainer than a Captain Obvious summary generator. …