 "Google working on 'AI health coach' for better sleep, stress, and fitness")
We track our sleep, exercise and wellness every day, but rarely understand how they truly connect. Google’s latest artificial intelligence project under Fitbit aims to change that, turning raw health data into personalised guidance.
Fitbit, which Google acquired in 2021, is now at the heart of this innovation. Built using Gemini, Google’s most advanced family of AI models, the new AI-powered personal health coach is designed to offer tailored insights for fitness, sleep and overall wellbeing.
The initiative takes Fitbit beyond simply tracking health data to actively helping users interpret it and make meaningful lifestyle changes.
What is Google’s health coach?
Think of it as a fitness trainer, sleep advisor and wellness guide rolled into one. The AI coach will provide custom insights and adaptive recommendations based on your Fitbit data, such as sleep patterns, heart rate, and activity levels.
Instead of simply counting steps or calories, it can help you understand why you feel tired, how to improve sleep quality, or what workouts suit your day’s readiness. According to Google, the goal is to help users build lasting habits through small, consistent actions.
How does it work?
“Do I get better sleep after exercising?” may sound like a simple question, but answering it like a proactive, personalised, and adaptive coach requires several key innovations.
1. Smarter data understanding
The coach needs to understand and analyse your body data, like sleep patterns and daily activity, to spot trends and give meaningful insights. It verifies the availability of recent data, selects the right metrics, compares relevant days, and puts the results in context, both against your personal baseline and population-level trends. It also takes into account your past interactions with the coach to provide truly tailored insights.
2. Multi-agent framework
Google’s health coach relies on a multi-agent framework, which coordinates specialised AI ‘sub-agents’ to offer holistic support:
- Conversational agent: Handles multi-turn dialogue, understands intent, gathers context and manages responses.
- Data-science agent: Fetches, analyses and summarises data like sleep and workouts.
- Domain expert: Fitness expert that analyses user data to create and adapt personalised fitness plans as your progress and routine change.
3. Guiding AI responsibly
The AI coach uses assessment systems based on health principles to ensure its recommendations are accurate, responsible, and useful. This multi-layered evaluation draws on over a million human annotations and more than 100,000 hours of expert review, spanning fields like sports science, sleep research, family medicine, cardiology, endocrinology, exercise physiology and behavioural science. To ensure the advice is safe and relevant, the coach follows a ‘SHARP’ framework, measuring safety, helpfulness, accuracy, relevance and personalisation.
What users can expect
The public preview is currently available to Fitbit Premium users in the United States, starting with Android devices and coming soon to iOS.
During setup, users chat with the coach for 5–10 minutes to outline their goals and motivations. From there, the AI provides ongoing, contextual support such as:
- A ‘Today’ feed that shares timely updates and insights when you wake up, finish a workout or wind down for bed.
- Custom fitness plans that adapt to your data, schedule and available equipment.
- Sleep support that helps you understand why you feel tired and how to improve your rest.
- A health summary hub showing key metrics like heart-rate variability, resting heart rate and weight trends.
- A conversational ‘Ask Coach’ feature for quick, everyday questions about fitness, sleep or wellness.
- Adaptive guidance that adjusts your plans as your activity, sleep and goals evolve over time.
A step forward in digital health
This technology reflects a broader shift in digital health initiatives, moving from passive tracking to proactive health coaching. With AI interpreting data in real time, users get insights that were once only available through personal trainers or sleep specialists.
For Fitbit, it’s an evolution from a device that tracks your lifestyle to one that understands and supports it.
However, Google clarifies that this coach is not a medical device and should not replace professional healthcare advice. For more health updates, follow #HealthwithBS