The past two years dealing with COVID-19 has really been a pivotal time across the board. The use of AI has become more mainstream, causing more and more companies to introduce AI powered products to the market. As a 20+ year experienced developer and expert in AI, I’m here to share some quick topline AI trends in health, fitness and sport that we can expect in 2022.
Artificial intelligence is a broad topic and it touches many areas and businesses that in turn shape our behaviour as consumers with new interactions, products or services. There are many signals that enable me to assume that this trend will continue for many years to come. From natural language processing to no-code or low-code systems to Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google offering cloud services and solutions that require low-code and no-code for everyone to create low-cost AI applications, products or services. And, I believe we are only scratching the surface here as the AI-market share does not have yet a strong provider.
Like in many other areas, COVID-19 has accelerated the use of AI in drug discovery last year. The first trial of an AI-discovered drug is underway in Japan which could significantly accelerate predicting the spread of a disease which in turn will improve health outcomes globally.
Professional players and athletes are using more and more advanced sports technology to improve all areas of their training and game performance. Sports venues are also catching up on that trend by leveraging AI-based solutions to do sentiment analysis to increase expectations engagement. What we are predicting is much of this technology will end up in the hands of consumers looking to improve their health, fitness and well-being. There are strong divers to support this such as early retirement of professional players because of injuries that could have been and can better be prevented by using AI and data in sport. We have also seen brands such as Wilson with the connected Basketball ball and Adidas with the smart Football ball. The same level of investment can be seen in Technogym that is incorporating users’ biometric data to better track fitness performance.
The COVID pandemic accelerated sales and helped the market grow significantly as we saw AI-sport technology being introduced in home-fitness equipment such as smart mirrors, bikes, rowing machines and treadmills. For example in 2020 the memberships for Peloton grow 232% to $757.9 million. This trend has had a disruptive impact in the gyms and fitness industry as people invested in their own private spaces or changed their homes to become their own private gym which is still connected to a like-minded community enabled by the connectivity built-in their smart equipment. We believe this trend is here to start as more businesses leverage AI + sensors and camera technology to create immersive, engaging and fun sports experiences, in the case of TeamSportz, only using their phone camera without any special equipment.
