OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Arianna Huffington want to use artificial intelligence to create a personalized health and wellness coach just for you. The two announced they’re launching Thrive AI Health to bring AI-powered expertise to healthy lives that are customized for each individual.
Huffington’s wellness tech company Thrive Global and the OpenAI Startup Fund, which invests in early-stage AI companies, are funding and launching Thrive AI Health, along with strategic investors including the Alice L. Walton Foundation. The company’s initial healthcare partners include the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine, Stanford Medicine and the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute at West Virginia University.
Thrive AI Health aims to use generative AI models like OpenAI’s to provide personalized health coaching that improves health outcomes. The expert-level guidance includes advice on improving your sleep, diet, exercise, stress management, and even your social life. The idea is that improving these interconnected behaviors will result in healthier habits for each person.
Former Google product management leader DeCarlos Love will serve as CEO, and his background is a natural fit for the new role. He previously oversaw Fitbit, the Pixel Watch, and Wear OS. It’s easy to see the connection, as Fitbit devices and the Pixel Watch have experimented with coaching tips, even if they don’t come from an LLM-based AI coach. There’s clearly interest in the idea, though, as evidenced by the AI health coach embedded in the recently announced Oura ring.
“Recent advances in artificial intelligence offer an unprecedented opportunity to make behavior change much more powerful and sustainable. AI has demonstrated a remarkable ability to assimilate large data sets, extract actionable insights, recognize patterns and make personalized recommendations,” Love said in a statement.
“Thrive AI Health Coach is the product to solve the limitations of current AI and LLM-based solutions by delivering personalized, proactive, and data-driven coaching across the five daily behaviors to improve health outcomes, reduce healthcare costs, and have a significant impact on chronic diseases globally.”
AI Coaching Puzzle
Thrive AI Health focuses on mental health, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other chronic conditions. Improving the daily lives of the 129 million Americans who suffer from at least one chronic condition would be a clear boon, especially as eight chronic diseases reach record highs in 2023.
Thrive AI Health says it can reduce the prevalence of chronic diseases by promoting healthier daily behaviors through personalized AI coaching. The AI Health Coach will use a personal context engine that processes each individual’s condition and tailors recommendations. The AI will be trained based on peer-reviewed scientific research, biometric data, lab results and user goals, the announcement claims. That includes Thrive Global’s Microsteps methodology and content library.
Of course, this kind of coaching, even personalized with AI, has a glaring gap. What good are healthy recipes, workout routines, and sleep suggestions if you don’t have the means to buy healthy food or if earning that money doesn’t leave you with the time to earn it, let alone exercise and get enough sleep?
The AI coach might as well say that step one is to win the lottery or add ten hours to every day. But even if life coaching can’t be applied to everything, AI models make the personalized approach to health much easier. It could help with overall health outcomes, especially when the coach’s data is applied to doctors’ predictions.