No thanks Google, I don’t want an AI yoga bestie
Like many Ny Breaking readers, I just watched Google IO 2024 and saw all the new things the Gemini AI is capable of. As I listened, I was very interested from a layman’s point of view, but as Ny Breaking’s Fitness and Wearables Editor I didn’t think there was much in it for me. I was certainly disappointed by the lack of a Wear OS 5 announcement.
But my ears perked up when Sissie Hsaio, Google vice president and general manager for Gemini experiences, showed how to best use Gemini in the multimodal Gemini app, previewing a new feature known as Gems . Gems will be released in the coming months and essentially stores successful specialist clues for you to build on later. Hsaio creates a gem for the audience called a “cliffhanger curator,” designed to help her write intriguing plot twists in short stories.
“Gemstones save a lot of time if you want to communicate with Gemini in specific ways over and over again,” says Hsaio. “Gemstones will be rolling out over the coming months and our trusted testers are already finding so many creative ways to use them. They can act as your yoga bestie, your personal sous chef, a math teacher…’
And there it was. The moment I heard “yoga bestie,” I started cringing, because I knew that artificial intelligence was once again making its presence known in the health and fitness world.
Gemini, like all artificial intelligence, is a service designed to make your life easier. That goes without saying when it comes to answering emails, summarizing conversations, and generating images of cats playing guitar. However, in the adorable video following 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 is different from many information processing requests because it requires physical action and repetition. I always believed that you can’t automate getting stronger, you can’t streamline running, and you can’t use AI to get better at yoga. I still kinda believe it. But by the gods, Big Tech is definitely going to try, and eventually it will succeed through brute force. I’m already half convinced that AI has a place in the gym, against my better judgement.
My first inkling that this was happening came from the algorithmically generated recommended running workouts of the top Garmin watches. Then came MWC 2024 this year, when I saw the potential of AI to map human performance through imagery. We’ll see a lot of people asking Google Gemini for training advice, just like that promotional video.
I have my own reservations about giving AI services unfettered access to my historical health information, despite Hsaio’s assurances that “your files will not be used to train our models.” I would also be careful about following any kind of fitness suggestion from a service that can’t talk about injuries, personal limitations, pre-existing conditions and so on. However, I’m a big hypocrite because I still followed some 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’s a useful inevitability?
I think after a little soul searching, I feel uneasy about AI intruding into a physical space, especially one that focuses on practicing mindfulness and being in touch with your body, like yoga. In an ideal world for the average Big Tech executive, we will never break away from our phones, laptops and apps, and as someone who spends a good portion of my waking hours staring at a screen, exercise (particularly yoga, which encourages the practitioner to spend time looking inward, instead of at sources of blue light) is my big disconnect.
If you don’t have access to in-person yoga classes and want guidance that you can’t get from video workouts on YouTube, Gemini may be able to provide some decent yoga directions and suggest popular moves sequences, and describe how to do that. perform those movements. However, don’t be fooled by the idea of a virtual “yoga bestie.” Google is great at this relaxed, friendly and helpful sounding language, but is a best friend Real a bestie if he wants something from you?
Mostly it’s your Gemini app subscription fee, but he also wants you to continue building on your “yoga bestie” gem, prompt after prompt, to make it better. It wants to learn from you, taking the essence of an exercise designed to ground you in the real world, turning them into data points, and sending them back to Google’s servers for other algorithms to delve into.
Gemini might be able to improve your exercise habits if you use it carefully, but taking a virtual service that represents everything about the data-driven commoditization of modern life and bringing it into a conscious, physical space feels a little wrong to me.
So no thanks Google. I don’t want to be yoga besties with you.