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Title: A closer look at GoogleΓÇÖs AI health coach and the redesigned Fitbit
app

Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2025 16:00:41 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/ai/a-closer-look-at-...

Alongside the Pixel Watch 4 (and family of Pixel 10 devices), Google also
introduced a new ΓÇ£personal health coachΓÇ¥ today at its Made By Google
event. A preview of it will begin rolling out in October as part of the
Fitbit app to Premium users in the US. The app is also getting a redesign
which the company says will be ΓÇ£available with the latest Fitbit trackers,
Fitbit smart watches and Pixel watches.ΓÇ¥

The first thing Fitbit users may notice is a visual refresh. In place of the
current organization system, the bottom of the screen will feature four tabs:
Today, Fitness, Sleep and Health. The home page (Today) will still feature
daily progress stats in the form of bars and rings at the top, though these
are now customizable so you can display your favorite metrics there.

Below this is a feed of your upcoming workouts, recent activity and progress
reports served in individual cards that you can tap into for more
information. This layout, with data visualizations at the top and a feed that
follows, is the same across all four tabs.

Google

At a recent demo, the companyΓÇÖs director of product management for Fitbit
and health Andy Abramson showed us how his app surfaced his weekly cardio
load in a ring, with bars to its right for his steps, readiness and sleep
performance. ΓÇ£We call these our focus metrics,ΓÇ¥ he said. These are in a
color scheme that will be familiar to Fitbit users, with purple continuing to
be the color representing sleep data and teal for steps. But thereΓÇÖs a few
more updates that Google says ΓÇ£address common user suggestions,ΓÇ¥ and
these include easier layouts, more intuitive data visualization, ΓÇ£improved
syncing ΓÇö and of course, dark mode.ΓÇ¥

Google didnΓÇÖt just give the Fitbit app a makeover. It said that coaching
and AI were at the core of the redesign, and that the ΓÇ£entire app was
rebuilt so the health coach can understand your goals, build your plan,
contextualize your metrics and bring insights at the right moments.ΓÇ¥

Abramson said that his team sought to figure out ΓÇ£How do we put the AI
coach in every part of the app?ΓÇ¥ Instead of simply tucking the AI features
into a dedicated tab, ΓÇ£We actually need to tie it together.ΓÇ¥

To that end, a floating ΓÇ£Ask CoachΓÇ¥ button is on every page of the app at
the bottom right, and tapping it will take you into a conversation window
with the Gemini-powered AI. This button is accessible across all the tabs in
the updated app, and you can ask it questions about all the data youΓÇÖve
provided to Fitbit.

On your first time using the new app, youΓÇÖll be prompted to have a
conversation with the AI coach, where it will ask about your goals, available
equipment and any preferences, injuries or other relevant medical history.
Those will go into an area called ΓÇ£Coach Notes,ΓÇ¥ that you can access in
the Health tab and see what the app knows about you. There, you can delete
things you donΓÇÖt want in there any more.

Cherlynn Low for Engadget

If you only have a few free weights and a rowing machine, for example, the
coach can build a custom plan that suggests a variety of weights-based
exercises interspersed with sessions on your rower. But if you tell it at any
point that you might be looking to incorporate outdoor runs into your
routine, it can do so. Abramson told the app he wanted to get better at trail
runs, for example, and in the version of the app I saw, that guidance
affected a lot of the recommendations he was served. As he had told it he was
traveling and had access to a hotel gym, it also suggested some activities on
the facilityΓÇÖs Peloton bike.

In future versions of the AI coach, you might be able to integrate with
Gemini Live and point your camera around your (or your hotelΓÇÖs) gym to get
the system to identify what equipment is available and generate suggestions
based on that. For now, all input to the app is limited to text, which means
you may still need to know the difference between a barbell, a Y-bell and a
dumbbell.

The coach will build programs based on the info you supply, and these will
come with detailed instructions and ΓÇ£metric targets that focus on weekly
progression.ΓÇ¥ If youΓÇÖre familiar with the cardio load and readiness score
features that Google and Fitbit have rolled out in recent years, itΓÇÖs easy
to see how the concept has been developing over time. Your activity progress
should not be judged on a daily basis ΓÇö too many variables could affect
whether you were able to get in a run or 10,000 steps on any given day.

Instead, a more forgiving and holistic approach would be to consider weekly
movement. If, like me, you tend to get in two cardio days, two strength days
and one HIIT day a week, you wonΓÇÖt be penalized for not getting cardio in
on a weights day. Or say you put in too many hours at work one day, writing a
long article late into the night. The AI coach will recognize that you
didnΓÇÖt get as much sleep as usual and adjust your target cardio load
accordingly. Google said the coach will make ΓÇ£real-time check-ins and
adjustmentsΓÇ¥ and that if you let the system know youΓÇÖve hurt your back,
it will give you tips on how to modify your workouts.

Google

Part of the update to the Fitbit app includes new sleep algorithms that
Google says make it more accurate, providing ΓÇ£a more precise understanding
of your sleep duration and stages.ΓÇ¥ The coach also guides you to get better
sleep, by studying your patterns over the week and sharing insights on how to
improve things over time. If it notices that on weekdays you take a longer
time than usual to fall asleep, for example, it might recommend heading to
bed or turning off your devices earlier. If it thinks you might be jetlagged,
it could suggest sleep schedules to help you re-adjust to new timezones.
Finally, the sleep coach might look at your energy expenditure each day and
recommend a bedtime that could get you 30 minutes of extra rest to get over a
particularly grueling workout you undertook that morning.

In time, the Fitbit coach will get data from a variety of sources, as it will
support Health Connect and HealthKit to get things like your glucose levels
or your weight and body composition from your smart scale or other connected
devices.

Google also says that in addition to helping you get personalized insights
based on your activity and rest, its AI coach can help make sense of an
overwhelming amount of data noise. ThatΓÇÖs not just the information overload
from all the different metrics your wearable might collect, but also the fact
that there is a ton of content out there today that Google says is ΓÇ£written
for everyone in general and no one in particular.ΓÇ¥

Since it has access to a wealth of data about you and a gigantic knowledge
base from the internet, the coach can filter out noise to give you pertinent
answers to your questions. You can ask things like ΓÇ£IΓÇÖm feeling stressed
right now. What can I do?ΓÇ¥ or ΓÇ£What are the best exercises for weight
lossΓÇ¥ and, according to Google, ΓÇ£get truly personalized answers that are
backed by science.ΓÇ¥ The system will also serve up timely and regular
reports on your performance and any trends or changes.

Using AI to make sense of the overwhelming amount of data collected by our
wearables seems like a smart approach, but itΓÇÖs not without its drawbacks
or concerns. Will your sensitive information be safely guarded? What type of
information will the AI Coach serve and how trustworthy is that guidance?

Google

Google appears to be attempting to get ahead of those concerns, saying it is
ΓÇ£committed to building our personal health coach with leading industry
experts and through scientific research.ΓÇ¥ ItΓÇÖs partnered with Stephen
Curry ΓÇ£and his performance team,ΓÇ¥ and is ΓÇ£working closely with our
Consumer Health Advisory Panel, a diverse group of leading experts in
medicine, AI and behavioral science.ΓÇ¥

I think itΓÇÖs imperative that Google state very clearly that its AI Coach
can not replace a doctor, a registered dietitian or a certified coach, and
that it has guardrails in place to prevent aggressively pushing a person
towards dangerous outcomes. The good news is, Google is well aware that it
will have work to do, and is clear that it is ΓÇ£releasing this experience as
a preview so you can help shape it as we make regular improvements.ΓÇ¥

For now, the AI is designed to help with fitness and sleep insights and
recommendations, though itΓÇÖs worth noting that Fitbit has historically
considered a broader range of areas including mental health and menstrual
cycles as essential components of overall wellbeing. In future, the AI Coach
may also cover those types of data.

If youΓÇÖre keen to test the redesigned Fitbit app and new personal health
coach out, youΓÇÖll have to be a Fitbit Premium subscriber, be based in the
US and sign up to get notified when the preview is available in October.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/a-
closer-look-at-googles-ai-health-coach-and-the-redesigned-fitbit-app-
160041881.html?src=rss

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