- Fitbit devices have a new fitness trainer powered by Gemini AI
- But the AI seems to be giving people extremely questionable advice.
- Users have expressed their dissatisfaction with the feature.
Fitbit recently introduced a new fitness trainer powered by Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence (AI), and it’s safe to say it’s received a lot of criticism from Fitbit users. The complaints have been coming in, but surely few have been as bizarre as one recently posted on Reddit involving some truly “unhinged” advice from Gemini.
Posting on Reddit, user bitteroldladybird began by stating that “the trainer suggested I get rid of my dog.” If that didn’t catch your attention, what comes next surely will.
They went on to explain that: “I’ve walked my dog twice a day his entire life. Including the last year and a little bit when I got my Fitbit.”
But after that preamble, things start to get weird: “Recently, the AI trainer has been giving me feedback on my walks and asked me why my pace was so slow. I responded that I walk with my dog. This slows me down because she stops, sniffs, pees, etc. The trainer said he understood. Today he asked me if he could get rid of the dog to speed up my walks.” The user then logged on and asked his fellow Redditors, “Has the coach given you strange or crazy advice?”
Interestingly, Bitteroldladybird was far from the only person to tell a story like this. User KateJ95 told how “They told me to get rid of my little boy… After that, they fired the coach.” Individual_Sun2060, on the other hand, said: “My coach incessantly tells me to rest and has probably suggested that I take the day off EVERY DAY.”
Meanwhile, user vemailangah had a helpful suggestion for Fitbit’s next update: “trainer sends AI robot to get rid of the dog and help you improve your walks.”
TechRadar’s own Matt Evans had a similarly strange experience with Fitbit’s AI trainer, explaining that he developed an obsession with a minor cold and wouldn’t let the problem go. After Evans didn’t wear his Fitbit for a day and therefore logged no steps or workouts, the AI chimed in: “yesterday was a full recovery day with minimal movement.”
As Matt explained, it seemed like Gemini “really thought I spent 12 hours perfectly still, like a mummy in a sarcophagus.”
Stick to any context
Judging by people’s comments on Reddit and here on TechRadar, it seems like Fitbit’s AI trainer is too focused on efficiency and fitness improvement. If you spot any type of “obstacle” that you think is holding you back, she suggests getting rid of it as soon as possible, even if that means getting rid of your beloved pup.
TechRadar’s Evans notes that this behavior could be because Gemini “simply latches onto whatever context you give it and is designed to improve your health, sometimes to the detriment of subtlety and context.” Since you know much more about yourself than Gemini, the chatbot has to follow any signals it can to build a picture of your well-being. And if you mention something tangentially relevant in your life, Gemini has some other resources to contextualize it.
In addition to creating the type of strange situations we’ve seen here, this problem limits the usefulness of the athletic trainer. Another thread on Reddit asked, “Does anyone actually use AI Coach?” and it was full of responses from people who lost patience with the feature. “When the test is over, I’m leaving. Coach is trash,” flanga said, while realManTing shared that “I find myself yelling at him over text and I can’t wait for my test to be over.”
As the original poster in that thread put it, the coach “constantly gives me long walls of text that are obvious, outdated, or just not helpful. I don’t want to read an essay every time I open the app; I just want short, actionable information.”
So it seems clear that Gemini’s AI trainer is not particularly popular with Fitbit users and has a worrying tendency to offer questionable advice and irritate them. Let’s hope Google can make some quick improvements before suggesting that someone leave their dog to log a slightly faster walk.
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