Want to know what your best resting heart rate was over the last month, or how you’ve been sleeping? Now, you may be able to just ask the Fitbit app instead of manually digging into the data yourself. That’s thanks to a new capability called Insights Explorer, which is part of Google’s experimental Fitbit Labs program.
It starts rolling out today to select Fitbit Premium users, bringing the ability to ask questions about trends in certain types of health metrics, such as sleep and heart-related data, to those who opt in. The launch comes roughly one year after Google announced plans to incorporate generative AI into the Fitbit app.
The move is yet another way Google is implementing generative AI into its most important products, from its Pixel phones to its search engine and Workspace suite of productivity software. It also highlights a broader trend in the wearables space of using large language models to help users better understand their health data.
“There’s a lot of excitement around the potential of AI to transform health and wellness in general,” Florence Thng, a director of product management at Google, said. “So we want to explore that potential, but we will also want to do it very thoughtfully.”
Fitbit Labs is an umbrella term for new AI-powered experimental health tools in the Fitbit app. Insights Explorer, the first “lab” that’s beginning to roll out, is meant to test whether a large language model can understand questions about health and wellness data and provide personalized answers. It’s based on Google’s Gemini models.
Google is framing Insights Explorer as a capability rather than a full-fledged feature because it’s being used specifically to test how large language models perform in this context, says Thng.
“We believe that it’s important to also hear from our community and iterate on how these things actually work in the real world, so that we can improve it and then learn which parts actually resonate well with the users,” she said, adding that the company is also doing a lot of internal testing.
In addition to providing text-based answers, Insights Explorer will be able to generate charts and infographics illustrating your health data. So if you ask a question about how sleep impacts heart rate variability, for example, you might see a graph showing the relationship between the two metrics.
The interface will also include suggested prompts in case users aren’t sure what to ask right away. The goal behind the tool, says Thng, is to help users increase their understanding of health metrics and connect the dots between them, since the company’s research has found that most people don’t understand what health markers like resting heart rate and heart rate variability actually mean.
The chatbot will only be capable of answering questions regarding certain types of health data, such as activity, sleep and heart health, and, like all Fitbit tools and features, isn’t meant for diagnosis. Specifically, Insights Explorer can generate answers based on data such as Active Zone Minutes, steps, sleep score, sleep duration, sleep stages, sleep and wake time, heart rate variability and resting heart rate, with more data types potentially arriving in the future.
Fitbit Labs interactions are processed in the cloud rather than on-device, meaning information must be sent to external servers to retrieve an answer. On-device processing for AI-related tasks is generally considered to be more private since data doesn’t need to leave your device. Thng says Fitbit health and wellness data will not be used for Google ads — although data from Fitbit Labs will be used for research and development in a way that doesn’t include any identifying information. Google also uses the same level of encryption for Fitbit Labs data as it does for its other apps. She also noted that users must opt into Fitbit Labs to use capabilities like Insight Explorer, and they can leave the program at any time.
The launch of Fitbit Labs is the latest sign that tech giants are looking to use generative AI to change how we interact with health and wellness apps. Earlier this year, Oura began testing a health chatbot called Oura Advisor, which similarly answers questions about health, sleep and activity. Samsung has also tested an AI health coach, which CNET uncovered unannounced details about in June. Apple is said to be working on health coaching features related to the Apple Watch, according to Bloomberg, and it also enabled Siri to answer health-related questions last year starting with the Apple Watch Series 9.
