Apple's AI health coach shelved, few features may arrive as updates: Report

Apple has reportedly scaled back its plans to launch an AI health coach, codenamed "Project Mulberry." The company might be planning to release select features gradually within the Health app

Apple has shelved its plans to launch an AI-powered virtual health coach internally known as Project Mulberry, according to a report by 9To5Mac citing Bloomberg. Instead of introducing the service as a standalone offering, Apple is now expected to release some of its planned features individually within the Health app, following leadership changes across its health and artificial intelligence teams.

 

“Apple is scaling back plans for a long-anticipated AI-powered virtual health coach,” Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported. “It’s no longer launching the service — dubbed Mulberry — and will instead launch some of the features as individual enhancements to the Health app over time.”

 

What Apple may still roll out

Although “Project Mulberry” will no longer launch as a unified service, Bloomberg reports that Apple is continuing work on several capabilities originally planned for the initiative. These features are expected to arrive incrementally as Health app updates.

 

Among them is a feature that would use the iPhone’s camera to analyse how a person walks, along with an AI chatbot designed to answer health-related questions. The chatbot reportedly relies on Apple’s internal “World Knowledge Answers” system, which is positioned as a competitor to AI-powered search tools such as Google’s Gemini and Perplexity.

 

Bloomberg also notes that Apple plans to expand Siri’s health-related capabilities with iOS 27, enabling the assistant to handle more advanced queries across the Health app and Apple’s operating systems.

How Apple shaped its AI health coach

Earlier last year, Bloomberg reported that Apple was developing an AI-driven health coach to sit within a redesigned Health app. The concept involved an AI agent trained on data from Apple-employed physicians, supported by expertise from specialists in sleep, nutrition, physical therapy, mental health, and cardiology.

 

Apple had also reportedly planned to produce educational video content to help users better understand health trends and metrics. For this, the company reportedly built a studio in Oakland, California. While this service itself will not launch, Bloomberg said that the studio will be repurposed, with some content potentially debuting as early as this year. The project was initially expected to launch alongside iOS 26, though its timeline shifted multiple times.