Comment by apwell23
1 day ago
garmin wants me to pay for some gen-ai workout messages on connect plus. Its the most absurd AI slop of all. Same with strava. I workout for mental relaxation and i just hate this AI stuff being crammed in there.
Atleast clippy was kind of cute.
Strava employees claim that casual users like the AI activity summaries. Supposedly users who don't know anything about exercise physiology didn't know how to interpret the various metrics and charts. I don't know if I believe that but it's at least plausible.
Personally I wish I could turn off the AI features, it's a waste of space.
Anytime someone from a company says that users like the super trendy thing they just made I take it with a sizeable grain of salt. Sometimes it's true, and maybe it is true for Strava, but I've seen enough cases where it isn't to discount such claims down to ~0.
The guy at the Wendy's drive thru has told me repeatedly that most people don't want ketchup so they stopped putting it in bags by default.
Strava's integration is just so lackluster. It literally turns four numbers from right above the slop message into free text. Thanks Strava, I'm a pro user for a decade, finally I can read "This was a hard workout" after my run. Such useful, much AI.
At this point, "we aren't adding any AI features" is a selling point for me. I've gotten real tired of AI slop and hype.
I use AI chatbots for 2+ hours a day but the Garmin thing was too much for me. The day they released their AI Garmin+ subscription, I took off my Forerunner and put it in a drawer. The whole point of Garmin is that it feels emotionally clean to use. Garmin adding a scammy subscription makes the ecosystem feel icky, and I'm not going to wear a piece of clothing that makes me feel icky. I don't think I'll buy a Garmin watch again.
(Since taking off the watch, I miss some of the data but my overall health and sleep haven't changed.)