Google is making big changes in health AI with the Fitbit Air

It’s a whoop dupe. That was my first thought when I saw the new $99 Google Fitbit Air. You can’t blame me. The group is without a cover and a metal cloth. My eyes darted between the Fitbit Air and my wrist, where I was wearing the Whoop MG. Wasn’t I seeing twice?

But as my press conference continued, my thoughts began to change. The Air is like the OG Fitbits that Whoop was the first to fool Fitbit into smartwatches. Think back to 2012, when the Fitbit One clipped your pants, turned into a pendant, or dangled from a keychain. The device was usually a pedometer, while the Air is a modern device, which can get out of one group and stick to one of the other three. But in many ways, this feels like a return to Fitbit’s roots — a simple casual tracker.

“The truth is, clothing has come a long way, but for many people, it’s too complicated, too much, or too expensive,” Rishi Chandra, vice president of Health and Home at Google, said. Seaside. “That’s where Fitbit Air came in. We wanted something that you could give your kids and parents to wear on their wrist. They don’t have to learn anything new.”

Compared to previous Fitbit trackers, the Air is 25 percent smaller than the Luxe and 50 percent smaller than the Inspire. It weighs just 12g with the band, and 5.2g without. There are no buttons, although there are LED lights and haptics for silent alarms. Tech-wise, it’s not as high-tech as the Pixel Watch, but it has the essentials: a heart rate monitor, a gyroscope, an accelerometer, a blood oxygen sensor, and a skin temperature sensor for sleep monitoring. You can submerge it in water up to 50 meters, and the battery lasts seven days on a single charge. This is disappointing, but it was similar to the old Fitbits, too. At least this one claims to get you water for a day and pay for it in five minutes. It will also work at the same time as the Pixel Watch – meaning if you want to wear it later in the day with the Air for exercise and sleep, you can wear it now. (Not long ago, Fitbit didn’t use multiple devices.)

But the Air isn’t a sign that Google is reviving Fitbit as it once was. This is Fitbit’s first hardware device in nearly four years, but it comes with the death of Fitbit’s software. Starting May 19, the Fitbit app and the Android Health Connect app will be merged into one Google Health app. Fitbit Premium subscription? This is also being changed to Google Health Premium, although the price will not change. In addition, his AI-powered Health Coach it’s leaving beta and rolling out to the public.

This is not surprising. Starting with Google got a Fitbit for $ 2.1 billion in 2021, it has been gradually integrating Fitbit into the large umbrella of Google, as it did with Nest. The transition has not always been smooth. Long time Fitbit users were outraged with multiple outages, a feature that was downgraded as a bug, and wearable wearable wearables when the Pixel Watch was introduced. Then, in early 2024, Fitbit’s original leadership he was fired.

“I know it’s going to be difficult for people. It was difficult for us internally,” says Chandra, referring to the reshuffle. “But as we think about the future, where the health app is going to go, the health app is not going to be specific to the Fitbit hardware…

Another reason, Chandra says, is that today’s healthcare market is highly fragmented. Previously, Google itself had two separate apps: Fitbit and Health Connect. Before that, it was the Google Fit app. Most wearable users have their data stored across a hodgepodge of apps, including Strava, Garmin, Peloton, etc. Their medical records are often stored on other systems. In some cases, app health data may be siled depending on your phone’s operating system. This is why, Chandra says, Google Health will be compatible with iOS and will eventually work with third-party wearables such as Garmins, Whoops, and Oura. (Starting out, however, it will be limited to Pixel and Fitbit devices.) This agnostic-agnostic approach is also difficult to revert to the old Fitbit. Only this time, it’s under the Google name.

Even so, the Google Health app won’t surprise many Fitbit users. There have been a public beta demo since October. In short, Google said that about 500,000 users participated in the beta, and the company received more than a million responses. Based on the responses, Google says that the final version will also add missing features (the preview did not include cycle tracking, for example), more flexibility with exercise training, a flexible view of the metrics analysis, a more accurate sleep method, and a less AI trainer.

“For us, it’s not ‘We’re launching this and we’ll see you in six months or a year, so hopefully we’ll make some changes,'” says Chandra, emphasizing that the plan is to continue rolling out regular updates based on feedback.

By combining these three announcements, Chandra says Google is trying to write a different story. Summary: Here’s a simple, affordable tool for the average person that integrates into an interactive health platform, complete with a built-in AI trainer. Buy it, and you’ll find the most straightforward, least-complicated way to predict your preferences and improve your health. In this case, you can access exercise plans, chat with AI about your medical history, use your phone’s camera to log meals, and ask you how your various health metrics relate to each other.

Google is far from the only wearable maker to try this – and in a similar universe, I’m betting that the independent Fitbit will also start to walk this road. But, like Apple, Google is one of the only players that can do well in the data integration field. But the area where everyone is stumbling right now is AI. I’ve tested almost all of the major AI health, fitness, and nutrition coaches. They are probably hallucinations or useless book reports. This does not mean privacy fears related to health information. (Going forward, Google says it will continue to store Fitbit’s data for its own advertising business; AI-style training is turned on and off by default.)

“This is a big problem,” admits Chandra when pushed on this. “The reason we foresaw people is that we have to make sure we didn’t make a big mistake. It’s very important to settle here … but we made a mistake. We’ll try to make it clear if we can, and we’ll try to accept it and continue to improve what we’re doing.”

It’s a big shock. Personal health is the holy grail of the apparel and health industry right now. Every new implementation, optimized metrics, and AI feature is moving toward this goal. I am not a forecaster. I don’t know how Google’s health game will play out. What I do know – and Google may not agree with me – is that the old days of Fitbit are over.