A new study potentially has good news for Apple’s rumored “Quartz” artificial intelligence health coach. As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to enhance the wellness landscape, questions of how these advancements might impact health and fitness arise.
Apple is working on a paid AI-powered health coach that could help you improve your exercise, sleep, and eating habits, according to Bloomberg. Codenamed “Quartz,” the service will apparently “use AI and data from an Apple Watch to make suggestions and create coaching programs tailored to specific users,” Bloomberg reports.
However, Quartz won’t be announced this year and is instead set to come out next year. The new Quartz service (and app) are just one of a few new health initiatives outlined in Bloomberg’s report.
To better understand the potential effects AI might have on the fitness industry, the team at Velotric, a maker of e-bikes, surveyed 1,000 American fitness enthusiasts to gauge their perception of AI-Assisted Training. Here are some highlights from the report:
- More than 60% of fitness enthusiasts would trust AI technology more if a well-established fitness brand developed it.
- The most trusted AI fitness brand to date is Apple’s upcoming health coach feature — Quartz, with 51% trusting it, closely followed by Google (48%) and Nike (39%).
- Nearly 8 in 10 fitness enthusiasts were interested in a gym that uses AI to tailor fitness programs and provide real-time responses to optimize workouts.
- Nearly 4 in 10 fitness enthusiasts would cancel their gym membership in favor of an AI fitness subscription.
- Apple Fitness+ is available as a subscription service for US$9.99 per month or $79.99 per year, and can be shared with up to five other family members. It’s included in the Apple One Premier plan, which, where available, also gives customers access to Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple News+, and iCloud+ with 2TB of storage, and can be shared with up to five other family members.
- Fitness+ is available in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Switzerland, the UAE, the UK, and the US.
The last point could be good news for Apple Fitness, which is available as a subscription service for US$9.99 per month or $79.99 per year, and can be shared with up to five other family members. It’s included in the Apple One Premier plan, which, where available, also gives customers access to Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple News+, and iCloud+ with 2TB of storage, and can be shared with up to five other family members.
Fitness+ is available in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Switzerland, the UAE, the UK, and the US.
True, but what are they going to do with it? Yes, Apple uses a LOT of behind-the-scenes stuff with ML and AI. However, there is so much more. Everyone seems to focus on using it for Siri. While a great pick, there are much lower-hanging fruit. For example, the Mac OS Help system is a mess. Imagine being able to ask context-aware questions that the AI has been trained with all of the Apple support knowledge. Extremely low risk for privacy and very helpful. Imagine having a generative AI assist you with creating automation with Shortcuts and Applescript. Something that many people skip because they are intimidated by it. However generative AI would help them walk right through it. I already use ChatGPT to assist me in creating Shortcuts/Applescripts and the AI doesn’t have an understanding the way that an Apple-trained AI would. How about an AI that knows about all of your documents and can answer questions, find information, and put together summaries using that information? Again, so many opportunities that don’t require a lot of work on Apple’s part but would help a lot.