Whoop is adding a ChatGPT-powered “coach” – The Verge
By Victoria Song, a senior reporter focusing on wearables, health tech, and more with 11 years of experience. Before coming to The Verge, she worked for Gizmodo and PC Magazine.
Whoop announced it’s adding generative AI to its platform with a new feature called Whoop Coach. Powered by ChatGPT, it’s meant to deliver more personalized recommendations and data insights.
Using AI in fitness tech for the sake of personalization isn’t new — though Whoop Coach is an admittedly novel take. Like ChatGPT, Whoop Coach functions as a health and fitness-focused chatbot that pulls from your Whoop data. One potential use case is asking it to design custom plans, routines, and recipes depending on your goals. For example, if you wanted to run a half-marathon in two hours, you could ask it to make you a training plan with context from your actual metrics.
Whoop says the feature can comb through your data to draw conclusions about why you might be feeling a certain way. It’ll also be able to tell you how your data stacks up to other people in your demographic (i.e., age, gender, etc.). For example, in Whoop’s press release, the company says the chatbot can deliver insights into why a person is tired or if their data suggests they’re getting sick. Of course, your mileage will likely vary depending on how much data you give Whoop.
The chatbot can also handle more general health and fitness questions — things you’d normally Google, like the definition of heart rate variability or why some athletes are adamant about “Zone 2” training. Whoop Coach can purportedly handle customer support queries as well.
I’m curious to see how Whoop users actually use the feature once it’s fully rolled out. Prompting AI chatbots is somewhat of an art. Plus, while Whoop Coach runs on the more recent ChatGPT-4, generative AI still has its limitations and can deliver misinformation. Still, Whoop appeals to a certain sect of self-quantifying, tech-savvy athletes, and the sheer amount of potential data Whoop lets you track is massive. On top of biometrics, the Journal feature within the app supports over 140 custom behaviors like pets waking you up in the night, alcohol and caffeine intake, diets, and medication.
It’s not hard to imagine more fitness tech companies taking this kind of tack going forward. “Personalization” is a buzzy word in the wearables space, and most fitness trackers offer features that use your data to give customized insights. Sleep coaching is a popular feature, for example, where companies run your data through algorithms to give you personalized insights on how to improve sleep. Whoop Coach feels like the next step up from black box algorithms to something a bit more interactive.
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