After yesterday’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) summit by Microsoft, I felt like writing about implications on AI in a field that was of personal interest to me. I like fitness, so I decided to think about, and looking into, what implications AI can hold for the fitness or personal health industry. I will put the emphasis on the coaching industry.
Fitness, as in personal health, consists of three elements, being; exercise, food consumption and rest, being non-training time and sleep. The question I asked myself was, can AI take over the job of a personal trainer? Personal trainers mainly make schema’s for, provide consultancy and motivate their clients to help them achieve their personal fitness goals. All of these mentioned tasks can be fulfilled by a chat bot in some way (Sebold, 2018).
AI can enable customers to take fitness out of the gym and into their homes through applications. Imagine having a personal trainer bot. This service could be subscription based and would always be available for advice on food, exercise information and reminders when to take rest (Wexer, 2017). When talking to the trainer bot, users feed it with experiences, preferences and goals. The trainer bot, being fed with all the additional information, will therefore become more personalized over time and will be able to provide the user with recommendations on which decisions to make in either of the three elements (Sebold, 2018).
Concluding, a bot with lots of information, fed by personal information from the user, can in the long run, make personal trainers obsolete in a way. However, the fact that setting an appointment with a personal trainer is in a sense a way for people that are not too motivated to still go to the gym, is something the bot can’t replace. Therefore, I am not sure if the profession will completely disappear. I would like to hear your opinions about this topic as well!
Sources
Sebold ,T. (2018). Artificial Intelligence has invaded the Fitness Business. [online] Accessed on [https://www.clubindustry.com/resourcebeat/artificial-intelligence-has-invaded-fitness-business] on 04-10-2018.
Wexer (2017). Understanding AI: How the Fitness Industry Needs to React. [online] Accessed on [https://www.wexer.com/understanding-ai-fitness-industry-needs-react/] on 4-10-2018.
Hi Ton, as I like going to the gym as well – this blog was a very interesting read! It’s really cool to see so many appliances and use cases for AI. What I think is especially interesting about a fitness AI bot is that its really able to cater to your specific needs. With personal trainers, I always feel like they’re not completely able to capture all of your body’s characteristics because of our human’s limited processing capabilities. With AI bots on the other hand, it should be possible to get the exact profile of your body right – as long as you provide the bot with unbiased data. Furthermore, this might be able to improve to get the perfect work-out schedules, food plans and recommended hours of sleep. While I have never used a personal trainer myself, I would totally be up for adopting such a solution – so im curious to see what the future holds!
Hi Ton,
In your blog you assume that an app which uses AI will probably not compete with real life personal trainers. As people get motivated by going to a personal trainer. I however, think it is the other way around. A lot of people are afraid of meeting personal trainers, as they are not confident about their bodies. Speaking to a real person, who tells them they should lose or gain weight will probably make many people feel ashamed.
You spoke about some possibilities, however you should even look further. The AI within the app can probably communicate with other devices such as scales. This way the app could keep track of your progress easier and more reliable.
Thank you for your comment Maurits. It would be interesting to do a study to see what are barriers to for people to see personal trainers and in what way an AI bot could take over this tasks. I agree with you, incorporating AI holds many possibilities, but i was limited to only +- 300 words in my blog.
You could argue that it could even be a business plan where an auction is held when a client asks a certain question. Imagine, a client asks the bot to look for protein shakes online and where to buy them. An auction could be held in order to give the bot the input he needs to do a certain recommendation. I think this is an example where the bot is linked with other platforms and money can be earned. I am curious to hear if you have any examples on the possibilities for AI, as you did not really mention them in your reply.