Google’s taking a giant swing at AI well being with the Fitbit Air

It’s a Whoop dupe. That was my first thought once I noticed the brand new $99 Google Fitbit Air. You can hardly blame me. The band is screenless with a metallic cloth clasp. My eyes flickered between the Fitbit Air and my wrist, the place I’m sporting a Whoop MG. Was I not seeing double?

But as my press briefing went on, my opinion began altering. The Air is kind of just like the OG Fitbits that Whoop then duped as soon as Fitbit went all in on smartwatches. Think again to 2012, when the Fitbit One might clip to your pants, be was a pendant, or dangle from a keychain. That gadget was largely a pedometer, whereas the Air is extra of a contemporary, modular sensor that may be popped out of 1 band and caught into certainly one of three others. But in some ways, this looks like a return to Fitbit’s roots — a easy band for informal monitoring.

“The reality is right now, wearables have made huge advancements, but for a lot of people, they’re still either too complicated, too bulky, or too expensive,” Rishi Chandra, Google’s vp of Health and Home, tells The Verge. “That’s where the Fitbit Air came in. We wanted something you could give to your kids and parents that they could just put on their arms. They don’t have to learn anything new.”

Compared to earlier Fitbit trackers, the Air is 25 p.c smaller than the Luxe and 50 p.c smaller than the Inspire. It weighs a mere 12g with the band, and 5.2g with out. There are not any buttons, although there’s an LED charging mild and haptics for silent alarms. Sensor-wise, it’s not as excessive tech because the Pixel Watch, but it surely’s obtained the staples: an optical coronary heart price sensor, gyroscope, accelerometer, blood oxygen sensor, and pores and skin temperature sensor for sleep monitoring. You can dunk it in water as much as 50 meters, and the battery lasts seven days on a single cost. That’s considerably disappointing, but it surely was typical for old-school Fitbits, too. At least this one purportedly will get you someday of juice with a five-minute cost. It’ll additionally work concurrently with a Pixel Watch — that means that in case you’d choose to put on the latter through the day and an Air for exercises and sleep, now you can. (Recently, Fitbit hasn’t supported a number of gadgets.)

But the Air is just not a sign that Google’s reviving Fitbit because it was. This is Fitbit’s first {hardware} product in practically 4 years, but it surely comes alongside the loss of life of the Fitbit app. Starting May nineteenth, the Fitbit app and Android’s Health Connect app might be consolidated into the only Google Health app. The Fitbit Premium subscription? That’s additionally being rebranded as Google Health Premium, although the value gained’t change. To prime all of it off, its AI-powered Health Coach is leaving beta and rolling out to the general public.

This is hardly shocking. Since Google acquired Fitbit for $2.1 billion in 2021, it’s been slowly however absolutely integrating Fitbit into the overarching Google umbrella, a lot because it did with Nest. The transition hasn’t at all times been easy. Longtime Fitbit customers have been enraged by a number of widespread outages, deprecated options like challenges, and a confused wearable lineup as soon as the Pixel Watch was launched. Then, in early 2024, Fitbit’s unique management was laid off.

“I know it will be hard for people. It was hard for us internally,” says Chandra, referring to the rebrand. “But as we think about the future, where the health app needs to go, the health app is not going to be specific to Fitbit hardware … We want to be a health coach to an Apple Watch user, too. That’s why we had to make the brand change.”

Another motive, Chandra says, is that the present well being knowledge market is fully too fragmented. Before now, Google itself had two separate apps: Fitbit and Health Connect. Before that, it was the Google Fit app. Many wearable customers have their knowledge saved throughout a hodgepodge of apps, together with Strava, Garmin, Peloton, and many others. Their medical data are sometimes saved on different programs. In some circumstances, well being app knowledge will be siloed relying in your telephone’s working system. Which is why, Chandra says, Google Health might be iOS appropriate and ultimately work with third-party wearables like Garmins, Whoops, and Oura. (To begin, nevertheless, it’ll be restricted to Pixel and Fitbit gadgets.) This platform-agnostic strategy additionally harkens again to the Fitbit of yore. It’s simply that this time, it’s beneath Google’s identify.

Even so, the Google Health app gained’t come as a shock to many Fitbit customers. There’s been a public preview beta since October. In a briefing, Google stated practically 500,000 customers had participated within the beta, and the corporate obtained over 1,000,000 bits of suggestions. Based on that suggestions, Google says the ultimate model will add again lacking options (the preview didn’t embody cycle monitoring, as an example), extra flexibility with the health teaching, a extra customizable interface for highlighting metrics, a extra correct sleep algorithm, and a much less chatty AI coach.

“For us, this is not a ‘We’re launching this and see you in six months or a year, then hopefully we’ll update it,” Chandra says, emphasizing that the plan is to proceed pushing out frequent updates primarily based on suggestions.

By bundling these three bulletins, Chandra says Google is attempting to jot down a definite narrative. In a nutshell: Here’s a easy, inexpensive gadget for the typical person who pairs with a consolidated well being knowledge platform, full with a built-in AI coach. Buy in, and also you’ll get probably the most streamlined, low-effort approach to get customized insights and take management of your well being. In this case, you will get adaptive health plans, chat with the AI about your medical data, use your telephone digicam to log meals, and ask how your numerous well being metrics relate to one another.

Google is way from the one wearable maker making an attempt this — and in a parallel universe, I’d guess that an unbiased Fitbit can be embarking on this highway too. But, like Apple, Google is among the solely gamers that might make good on the info consolidation a part of the equation. But the half that everybody’s at present stumbling on is the AI. I’ve examined practically all the most important AI well being, health, and vitamin coaches. They are both hallucinatory dogshit or ineffective guide experiences. That’s to not point out knowledge privateness fears relating to delicate well being info. (On that entrance, Google says it’ll proceed to maintain Fitbit knowledge siloed from its advert enterprise; AI mannequin coaching is opt-in and turned off by default.)

“This is a very hard problem,” concedes Chandra when pushed on this. “The reason why we did the public preview is that we need to make sure we didn’t make big mistakes. The rigor here is absolutely critical … but we are going to make mistakes. We’ll try to clarify those mistakes when we can, and we’ll try to own up to them and keep improving the product as we go.”

It’s a giant swing. Personalized well being is the holy grail of the wearable and well being business proper now. Every new wearable launch, optimized metric, and AI characteristic is hurtling towards this objective. I’m no fortune teller. I don’t understand how Google’s well being gambits will play out. What I do know — and Google will seemingly disagree with me — is that the outdated Fitbit period is certainly over.