You might have noticed the furore around users being forced to switch from the Fitbit app to the Google Health app this month, and it’s an update that’s happened on my phone too now: five years after Google acquired Fitbit, the Fitbit app is now no more, though the brand name lives in with the new Google Fitbit Air.
I don’t mind the new app too much, even if it’s not quite as well laid out or as intuitive as the old Fitbit one, but it’s the Google Health Coach that I have the biggest reservations about. This AI-powered helper promises to provide personalized, insightful advice on your fitness and well-being, and you can interact with it in an easy, conversational way.
So far I’m not convinced, and I’ll explain why. Note that I pay for Google AI Pro (mostly so that I can write about its features for work), so I get all the features of Google Health Premium and the AI Coach included. Separately, a lot of the AI Coach add-ons will set you back $9.99 / £7.99 / AU$14.99 a month.
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Google Health Coach really is here to help
Setting up the Health Coach (Image credit: Future)
No sooner had I switched to the Google Health app than I was being politely but firmly onboarded with the AI Coach, to give me that bespoke fitness advice that I’ve clearly been missing up to this point. My coach and I started with a rather awkward conversation where I got reams of text on what the AI could do, and I politely asked to keep the well-being tips simple and general for now.
I like to keep track of sleep, steps, and how much water I’m taking in each day, and to counteract the health impacts of a desk job by keeping active. Beyond that though, and a bit of 5-a-side, I don’t really have any health goals — I don’t run or cycle, and I’m not looking to hit any specific targets through the rest of 2026.
Right from the first day of using Google Health, I opened the app to find a long block of AI-generated text — in that familiar, polished, peppy AI style — telling me about my recovery wins and that I’d logged eight hours of sleep. I also got a weather report included. So it was essentially taking up two-thirds of the screen to give me the same information I could get from a glance at the widget at the top of the page and a quick weather check.
The AI advice was of course followed by some preset responses I could use to report how I was feeling and continue the conversation, but I declined. As far as I can tell, there’s no way to turn this Health Coach off, which seems strange — though presumably if you don’t have the full premium subscription, you’ll see less of it.
I have to acknowledge that the AI may get better over time, and I’m writing this after just a few days with it — maybe in future months and years it’ll serve up some dazzling fitness insights. For now though, it seems to do a lot of stating the obvious, and using a lot of words and screen real estate along the way.
AI can and does make mistakes
Be ready for a lot of AI advice (Image credit: Future)
At the bottom of your conversations with the Google Health Coach you’ll see a familiar warning: “Coach is AI and can make mistakes. Not for medical advice.” It’s similar to the caveats you’ll see under chats with the regular Gemini bot, or with the AI Overviews that now constantly pop up when you’re searching for something in Google.
The inherently flawed nature of generative AI seems to be something that many people are just accepting now — that it doesn’t really matter if AI makes mistakes, or that it gets it right often enough that a few inconsistencies can be overlooked. But this technology does genuinely make mistakes and spread misinformation, pretty regularly.
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When I was researching this article, Google’s AI Overviews told me a Google Health Premium subscription in Australia was AU$9.99 a month, and I had to go to the official Google post to find the right number. So we’re on zero days since AI last made a mistake. Is it therefore wise to be relying on it for fitness and health advice?
Exactly how often will the AI Coach make mistakes? In what kind of areas? Is it going to tell me I got more sleep last week than I actually did? Will it put me on a six-month strength building program that actually reduces my strength? I’m sure it’ll work most of the time, as our fitness editor Matt Evans has already found out, but what about when it doesn’t?
I’d rather check my sleep and step stats myself, if it’s all the same thanks Google — just like I have been doing for years. If Google is looking for ways to improve the AI Coach in future versions of its app, I’d suggest giving us a way to hide it behind a separate tab, so we can look at the most reliable data first.
I’ll give the last word to the last message my AI Coach sent me: “{‘call_tool’:’end_of_conversation’)”.
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