Fitbit Air with Gemini uses Ai to power a body operating system
No longer simply a chatbot answering questions, but an artificial intelligence that observes the body in real time and tries to suggest behaviour, rhythms, recovery, sleep, nutrition.
For years, Google has chased Apple on the smartwatch terrain. Now it seems to want to change the game. With the new Fitbit Air, the Mountain View group is not so much trying to build a better watch. It tries to build a personal health infrastructure based on artificial intelligence.
The device is almost provocative in its simplicity: no screen, no continuous notifications, no wrist apps. A 99 euro band that weighs 12 grams and collects biometric data in the background. Heart rate, sleep, skin temperature, cardiac variability, oxygenation. The point, however, is not the wristband. The point is the health operating system that Google is building on top of that data.
The real novelty is in fact Google Health Coach, the new Gemini-based assistant that gradually replaces the Fitbit Premium universe. Google is no longer talking about fitness tracking. It speaks of 'coach'. A word that in the lexicon of Big Tech means a precise thing: transforming an occasional service into an ongoing relationship. The AI analyses sleep, recovery, physical activity, nutrition and even medical records or photos of meals to generate personalised recommendations.
This is where you see the strategy. Apple uses the Apple Watch as an extension of the iPhone. Google, on the other hand, seems to want to use the Fitbit Air as a data collection terminal to power a cross-platform health ecosystem. It is no coincidence that Google is unifying Fitbit, Health Connect and Google Health into a single platform. And above all, it promises future compatibility also with competing devices such as Garmin or Whoop.
Clearly, on the privacy side, Google is keen to emphasise that Fitbit users' health and wellness data are not used for Google Ads.
