People are already using ChatGPT to create training plans

Go to the gym

Despite the varying quality of ChatGPT’s fitness advice, some people have actually followed its advice at the gym.

John Yu, a US-based TikTok content creator, filmed himself after a six-day comprehensive training regimen courtesy of ChatGPT. He asked her to give him a sample workout plan each day, tailored to the part of his body he wanted to work (his arms, legs, etc.), then did the workout he gave.

The exercises offered were perfectly correct and quite easy to follow. However, Yu found that the moves lacked variety. “Strictly following what ChatGPT gives me is something I’m not really interested in,” he says.

Lee Lem, an Australian-based bodybuilding content creator, had a similar experience. He asked ChatGPT to create an “optimal leg day” schedule. He suggested the right types of exercises – squats, lunges, deadlifts, etc. – but the rest times between them were much too short. “It’s hard!” said Lem laughing. “It’s very unrealistic to rest only 30 seconds between sets of squats.”

Lem got to the heart of the matter with ChatGPT’s suggestions: they don’t take the human body into account. As he and Yu discovered, repetitive movements quickly leave us bored or tired. Human trainers know how to mix up their suggestions. ChatGPT must be explicitly specified.

For some, however, the lure of an AI-produced workout is still irresistible – and something they’re even willing to pay for. Ahmed Mire, a London-based software engineer, sells plans produced by ChatGPT for $15 each. People give him their workout goals and specs, and he performs them through ChatGPT. He says he has already signed up customers since the service launched last month and is also considering adding the option to create diet plans. ChatGPT is free, but it says people pay for convenience.

What united everyone I spoke to was their decision to treat ChatGPT’s workout suggestions as entertaining experiences rather than serious sports advice. They all had a pretty good understanding of fitness and what works and doesn’t work for their bodies, to be able to spot the model’s weaknesses. They all knew they had to treat his answers with skepticism. People new to training might be more inclined to take them at face value.

The future of fitness?

This doesn’t mean that AI models can’t or shouldn’t play a role in developing fitness plans. But this underlines that they cannot necessarily be trusted. ChatGPT will improve and may learn to ask its own questions. For example, it can ask users if there are any exercises they hate or inquire about possible injuries. But essentially he can’t come up with original suggestions and he has no fundamental understanding of the concepts he regurgitates.