Like many TechRadar readers, I just finished watching Google IO 2024 and seeing all the new things Gemini AI is capable of. As I listened, I was very interested from a layman's point of view, but as TechRadar's fitness and wearables editor, I didn't think there was much for me. I was certainly disappointed by the lack of a Wear OS 5 announcement.
But my ears pricked up when Sissie Hsaio, Google vice president and general manager of Gemini experiences, showed how to best use Gemini within the Gemini multimodal app, with a new preview feature known as Gems. Gems, which will launch in the coming months, basically saves successful suggestions from specialists so you can build on them later. Hsaio creates a gem in front of the audience called a “suspense curator” designed to help them write intriguing plot twists in short stories.
“Gems save a lot of time when you want to interact with Gemini in specific ways over and over again,” Hsaio said. “The gems will be released in the coming months and our trusted testers are already finding many creative ways to use them. They could act as your best yoga friend, your personal sous chef, a calculus tutor…”
And there it was. The moment I heard “yoga bestie” I started to cringe, because I knew that artificial intelligence was making its presence known in the health and fitness space once again.
Gemini is, like all artificial intelligence, a service designed to make your life easier. This is evident when it comes to answering emails, summarizing conversations, and generating images of cats playing guitar. However, in the cute video that follows Hsaio's presentation, a user also asks ChatGPT for a workout routine to get bigger calves, among other requests to rephrase emails or suggest memoir titles.
The health and fitness space differs from many information processing requests in that it requires physical action and repetition. I used to believe that you can't automate strengthening, you can't optimize running, and you can't use AI to get better at yoga. I still believe it. But, by the gods, big tech companies will certainly try, and eventually achieve it through brute force. I'm already half convinced that AI has a place in the gym, against my better judgment.
My first hint that this was happening was through the algorithmically generated recommended running workouts from the best Garmin watches. Then came this year's MWC 2024, when I saw the potential of AI to map human performance through images. We're about to see a lot of people asking Google Gemini for exercise advice, like in that promotional video.
I have my own reservations about giving AI services unlimited access to my historical health information, despite Hsaio's assurance that “your files are not used to train our models.” I would also be cautious about following any type of fitness suggestion from a service that cannot address injuries, personal limitations, existing conditions, etc. However, I am a huge hypocrite because I still followed several of Garmin's recommended training structures. So why does the idea of artificial intelligence playing a role in consumer well-being give me goosebumps, if it is a useful inevitability?
I think, after a little soul-searching, I'm uncomfortable with the intrusion of AI into a physical space, especially one focused on mindfulness practices and being in touch with the body, like yoga. In an ideal world for the average Big Tech executive, we will never disconnect from our phones, laptops, and apps, and as someone who spends many waking hours staring at a screen, exercise (especially yoga, which encourages the practitioner ) spending time looking inward, rather than at blue light sources) is my big decoupler.
If you don't have access to in-person yoga classes and want guidance that you don't get through video exercises on YouTube, Gemini can offer you some decent yoga tips, suggest popular sequences of movements, and describe how to do them. perform those movements. However, don't be fooled by the idea of a virtual “yoga best friend.” Google is great at this relaxed, friendly, helpful-sounding language, but it's your best friend. In fact Does a best friend want something from you?
Mainly, it's your Gemini app subscription fee, but it also wants you to continue developing your “yoga bestie” gem with message after message, to make it better. It wants to learn from you, taking the essence of an exercise designed to connect you with the real world and transfiguring it into data points, sending them back to Google's servers to be pored over by other algorithms.
Gemini may be able to improve your exercise habits, if used carefully, but taking a virtual service that represents everything about the data-driven commodification of modern life and bringing it into a physical, conscious space seems a bit a bit incorrect.
So, no thanks Google. I don't want to be my best yoga friend with you.
