Google’s Taking A Big Swing At Ai Health With The Fitbit Air

It’s a Whoop dupe. That was my first thought erstwhile I saw nan caller $99 Google Fitbit Air. You tin hardly blasted me. The set is screenless pinch a metallic cloth clasp. My eyes flickered betwixt nan Fitbit Air and my wrist, wherever I’m wearing a Whoop MG. Was I not seeing double?

But arsenic my property briefing went on, my sentiment started changing. The Air is benignant of for illustration nan OG Fitbits that Whoop past duped erstwhile Fitbit went each successful connected smartwatches. Think backmost to 2012, erstwhile nan Fitbit One could clip to your pants, beryllium turned into a pendant, aliases dangle from a keychain. That instrumentality was mostly a pedometer, whereas nan Air is much of a modern, modular sensor that tin beryllium popped retired of 1 set and stuck into 1 of 3 others. But successful galore ways, this feels for illustration a return to Fitbit’s roots — a elemental set for casual tracking.

“The reality is correct now, wearables person made immense advancements, but for a batch of people, they’re still either excessively complicated, excessively bulky, aliases excessively expensive,” Rishi Chandra, Google’s vice president of Health and Home, tells The Verge. “That’s wherever nan Fitbit Air came in. We wanted thing you could springiness to your kids and parents that they could conscionable put connected their arms. They don’t person to study thing new.”

Compared to erstwhile Fitbit trackers, nan Air is 25 percent smaller than nan Luxe and 50 percent smaller than nan Inspire. It weighs a specified 12g pinch nan band, and 5.2g without. There are nary buttons, though location is an LED charging ray and haptics for silent alarms. Sensor-wise, it’s not arsenic precocious tech arsenic nan Pixel Watch, but it’s sewage nan staples: an optical bosom complaint sensor, gyroscope, accelerometer, humor oxygen sensor, and tegument somesthesia sensor for slumber tracking. You tin dunk it successful h2o up to 50 meters, and nan artillery lasts 7 days connected a azygous charge. That’s somewhat disappointing, but it was emblematic for old-school Fitbits, too. At slightest this 1 purportedly gets you 1 time of juice pinch a five-minute charge. It’ll besides activity concurrently pinch a Pixel Watch — meaning that if you’d for illustration to deterioration nan second during nan time and an Air for workouts and sleep, you tin now. (Recently, Fitbit hasn’t supported aggregate devices.)

But nan Air is not a awesome that Google’s reviving Fitbit arsenic it was. This is Fitbit’s first hardware merchandise successful astir 4 years, but it comes alongside nan decease of nan Fitbit app. Starting May 19th, nan Fitbit app and Android’s Health Connect app will beryllium consolidated into nan azygous Google Health app. The Fitbit Premium subscription? That’s besides being rebranded arsenic Google Health Premium, though nan value won’t change. To apical it each off, its AI-powered Health Coach is leaving beta and rolling retired to nan public.

This is hardly surprising. Since Google acquired Fitbit for $2.1 cardinal successful 2021, it’s been slow but surely integrating Fitbit into nan overarching Google umbrella, overmuch arsenic it did pinch Nest. The modulation hasn’t ever been smooth. Longtime Fitbit users were enraged by aggregate wide outages, deprecated features for illustration challenges, and a confused wearable lineup erstwhile nan Pixel Watch was introduced. Then, successful early 2024, Fitbit’s original activity was laid off.

“I cognize it will beryllium difficult for people. It was difficult for america internally,” says Chandra, referring to nan rebrand. “But arsenic we deliberation astir nan future, wherever nan wellness app needs to go, nan wellness app is not going to beryllium circumstantial to Fitbit hardware … We want to beryllium a wellness coach to an Apple Watch user, too. That’s why we had to make nan marque change.”

Another reason, Chandra says, is that nan existent wellness information marketplace is wholly excessively fragmented. Before now, Google itself had 2 abstracted apps: Fitbit and Health Connect. Before that, it was nan Google Fit app. Many wearable users person their information stored crossed a hodgepodge of apps, including Strava, Garmin, Peloton, etc. Their aesculapian records are often stored connected different systems. In immoderate cases, wellness app information tin beryllium siloed depending connected your phone’s operating system. Which is why, Chandra says, Google Health will beryllium iOS compatible and yet activity pinch third-party wearables for illustration Garmins, Whoops, and Oura. (To start, however, it’ll beryllium constricted to Pixel and Fitbit devices.) This platform-agnostic attack besides harkens backmost to nan Fitbit of yore. It’s conscionable that this time, it’s nether Google’s name.

Even so, nan Google Health app won’t travel arsenic a daze to galore Fitbit users. There’s been a public preview beta since October. In a briefing, Google said astir 500,000 users had participated successful nan beta, and nan institution received complete a cardinal bits of feedback. Based connected that feedback, Google says nan last type will adhd backmost missing features (the preview did not see rhythm tracking, for instance), much elasticity pinch nan fittingness coaching, a much customizable interface for highlighting metrics, a much meticulous slumber algorithm, and a little chatty AI coach.

“For us, this is not a ‘We’re launching this and spot you successful six months aliases a year, past hopefully we’ll update it,” Chandra says, emphasizing that nan scheme is to proceed pushing retired predominant updates based connected feedback.

By bundling these 3 announcements, Chandra says Google is trying to constitute a chopped narrative. In a nutshell: Here’s a simple, affordable instrumentality for nan mean personification that pairs pinch a consolidated wellness information platform, complete pinch a built-in AI coach. Buy in, and you’ll get nan astir streamlined, low-effort measurement to get personalized insights and return power of your health. In this case, you tin get adaptive fittingness plans, chat pinch nan AI astir your aesculapian records, usage your telephone camera to log meals, and inquire really your various wellness metrics subordinate to each other.

Google is acold from nan only wearable shaper attempting this — and successful a parallel universe, I’d stake that an independent Fitbit would beryllium embarking connected this roadworthy too. But, for illustration Apple, Google is 1 of nan only players that could make bully connected nan information consolidation portion of nan equation. But nan portion that everyone’s presently stumbling connected is nan AI. I’ve tested astir each nan awesome AI health, fitness, and nutrition coaches. They are either hallucinatory dogshit aliases useless book reports. That’s not to mention information privateness fears regarding delicate wellness information. (On that front, Google says it will proceed to support Fitbit information siloed from its advertisement business; AI exemplary training is opt-in and turned disconnected by default.)

“This is simply a very difficult problem,” concedes Chandra erstwhile pushed connected this. “The logic why we did nan nationalist preview is that we request to make judge we didn’t make large mistakes. The rigor present is perfectly captious … but we are going to make mistakes. We’ll effort to explain those mistakes erstwhile we can, and we’ll effort to ain up to them and support improving nan merchandise arsenic we go.”

It’s a large swing. Personalized wellness is nan beatified grail of nan wearable and wellness manufacture correct now. Every caller wearable launch, optimized metric, and AI characteristic is hurtling toward this goal. I’m nary luck teller. I don’t cognize really Google’s wellness gambits will play out. What I do cognize — and Google will apt disagree pinch maine — is that nan aged Fitbit era is decidedly over.