About Strava AI and Why it is Stupid.
And why it might be not.
Welcome! For those who are new here — I’m Arne Jacobs, a passionate cyclist and engineer with a deep interest in AI. Here, I explore how artificial intelligence is transforming sports— or not— and what it means for athletes, coaches and sport enthusiasts.
Even when I am not on Strava, I am on Strava. And I am at fault. My social media algorithms are ingested with sports and cycling. When viewing Instagram stories, I am still seeing Strava activities of people sharing Strava activities on Instagram stories. Because who doesn’t love to double, triple, quadruple share, right?
Latest trend in the cross-sharing: show how stupid (or not) Strava AI’s comment was on your latest Strava activity. “Strava AI, got it right!”, “Unsure about this one, @strava.”, “Wow, it even got the weather!”. For those who have not noticed: you might want to compare your activity title and the Athlete Intelligence feedback.
Exactly — Strava’s 'Intelligence' is simply extrapolated from your activity title and description. Same for insights on pacing, power and heart rate. It is no more than a written description of the graphs Strava is already showing me. “Nice ride of 270W average with some duration in Z2 and Z3.”
Is it all AI-marketing and useless?
Yes and no. Surely, Strava has hopped on the AI-hype train via the integration of Athlete Intelligence. And yes, it is pretty useless at this moment. Yet, your Strava account is an incredibly valuable source of millions of data points. There are countless possibilities how this data can be used.
Imagine Strava providing training session suggestions based on your training history: what worked for you, what did not? Or Strava providing you with taper-week approach based on your most successful races? Strava helping you with injury prevention and recovery? We have only begun scratching the surface here.
But for now, we will just keep giggling at Strava’s AI, trying to fool the actual Athlete’s Intelligence.