\n We may earn a commission from links on this page.\n <\/p>\n
Google has launched its “Personal Health Agent,” an AI coach available in the Fitbit app. Currently it\u2019s in a \u201cpreview\u201d mode, and limited to Android users in the U.S. who have a Fitbit Premium subscription. That group includes me, so I tried it, and it gave me some decent workouts. It also told me that the Pixel Watch 4<\/a>, which Google makes, and which I reviewed<\/a>, and which am currently wearing, does not exist.\u00a0So, par for the course when it comes to AI.<\/p>\n How to enable the Fitbit app\u2019s personal health coach<\/p>\n The \u201cpublic preview\u201d of this new coaching bot is available starting today for Fitbit Premium users in the U.S., provided they use Android. (Support for iOS is coming soon, Google says.) I\u2019m a little unclear on what to call this bot\u2014an email I got from Google calls it their “Personal Health Agent” and describes it as “Google Health\u2019s AI coach.” A Google blog post<\/a> calls it Fitbit\u2019s “personal health coach.” In any case, it lives in the Fitbit app.\u00a0<\/p>\n When the AI coach became available for me, I received a message at the top of my Today screen asking if I\u2019d like to \u201ctry new Fitbit features before they\u2019re available to everyone.\u201d If you missed that prompt, you can go to your profile pic at the top right corner of the app and select Public Preview from the menu that appears.\u00a0<\/p>\n Joining the public preview launches you into an entirely different version\u2014dare I call it a beta?\u2014of the Fitbit app. It doesn\u2019t yet include menstrual health, mindfulness, nutrition, or community features, so to access those, you’ll need to switch back to the old version of the app. You can swap between versions at any time from the menu under your profile icon.<\/p>\n Setting up my fitness goals<\/p>\n Google says the new chatbot can answer general questions about health…but so can a web search, so I wasn’t too excited about that. What I did want to see was how well the bot could set up a coherent exercise plan for me\u2014that’s the big feature Google is touting. It did pretty well, at first.\u00a0<\/p>\n The coach asked the same kinds of questions I would expect a personal trainer to cover when putting together a plan. It seemed to have a nicely structured approach, and gathered this information:\u00a0<\/p>\n My main goal (I told it I’d like to get back into a consistent habit after time off)<\/p>\n My biggest challenge (I said something about motivation and time)<\/p>\n How much exercise I was used to doing, including my running mileage and paces (it pulled this from my exercise data but let me make corrections)<\/p>\n What activities I like to do<\/p>\n When I like to do them (it noticed that my strength sessions tend to fall on Tuesdays and Thursdays)<\/p>\n What equipment I have available (it deduced I have space to run outdoors, and strength training equipment)<\/p>\n How many days each week I\u2019d like to exercise<\/p>\n It responded well to my adjustments during the conversation. I told it I\u2019d like to alternate strength training and running (with Saturdays off), starting today with a strength training session. It suggested a lower body focus to support my running, which I declined. I named some of my favorite lifts and asked if it could build the strength program around those. We were agreed\u2014a six-day plan with strength and running was coming right up.<\/p>\n The bot told me it would take up to 10 minutes to generate my plan, but it only took about two. My workouts for the week matched what we\u2019d discussed, with a few discrepancies. For example, I asked for pull-ups and it gave me assisted pull-ups. I also didn\u2019t like the six-rep sets of squat and bench press, since I was hoping for heavier lifts with fewer reps. But there is an \u201cadjust plan\u201d button, and with some more back-and-forth, I was able to get it to tweak the workouts to my liking.\u00a0<\/p>\n It has trouble planning for the long term<\/p>\n I was excited to look over my plan\u2014to me, a plan sets out the steps to accomplish a goal. For a training plan, that would involve building toward that goal over a matter of weeks or months. For example, a marathon training plan<\/a> would increase your mileage over time until you can run a strong 26 miles. In my case, with a goal of consistency, almost anything would fit the bill. This is easy mode for a trainer, AI or otherwise.<\/p>\n But what I got in the app was not what I would call a plan. It was four workouts, taking me from today to my rest day on Saturday. There was no way to view next week, or the week after that, or to see how many weeks were even in this alleged plan. I didn\u2019t even have a way to see the last two days of my six-day plan.\u00a0<\/p>\n I asked the bot what was coming up next, and it said it wasn\u2019t able to tell me anything about next week. What about the end of this week? (We agreed on six days, after all.) It told me that the week is Tuesday through Saturday. I began to feel like those bodybuilders arguing over how many days are in a week<\/a>. After some back-and-forth, it delivered me text descriptions of what Sunday and Monday\u2019s workouts might look like, but they were incomplete, not even naming what lifts I\u2019d be doing on the strength day. When I exited the conversation and looked at the workouts in the app, I only had the original four.<\/p>\n I tried asking another way, and the coach was able to give a broad overview of what the next few weeks might contain. Unfortunately the adjustments we\u2019d previously discussed weren\u2019t factored in, so it described how the second week would build on the originally programmed first week, not how it would build on the workouts that were actually on my calendar.\u00a0If I were comparing this chatbot’s plan to something from, say, the Reddit fitness wiki<\/a>, pretty much anything on the wiki would have been more comprehensive.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no good way to follow the workouts<\/p>\n I\u2019ve written before<\/a> about the Pixel Watch\u2019s barebones fitness tracking. (This applies to Fitbits like the Charge 6<\/a> as well.) You can turn on a strength training mode on the watch, but you can\u2019t track rest times or note what exercises you did, though there is some ability to create and follow running workouts.\u00a0<\/p>\n With that in mind, I didn\u2019t expect to be able to follow the strength workouts from my watch, but I figured it was worth asking. The bot told me to just track a basic strength workout from the watch (which records heart rate and total time, nothing else) and follow the exercises from my phone. Fair enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n But wait! The app just shows each exercise with a checkbox next to it. If you\u2019re supposed to do three sets of six reps, you only get one checkbox, not three. And there\u2019s no way to note how much weight you used so you can build on it next time. The bot told me we\u2019d be doing some progressive overload<\/a>, but how to progress if we\u2019re not tracking how much weight I\u2019m using?\u00a0<\/p>\n What do you think so far?<\/p>\n