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Without breaking a sweat, artificial intelligence can perform all kinds of impressive tasks. So if you’re looking to turn up the heat on your usual workout, or wondering how to start one, should you turn to a chatbot?

It depends, say experts, who agree exercise is essential but don’t have much research about fast-evolving AI tools to guide them.

“There’s a lot of uncharted territory,” said Dr. Keith Diaz, a certified exercise physiologist who is an associate professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. Much of the science that has been done is “early phase stuff,” he said.

But Diaz, a member of the physical activity committee of the Ãå±±ÊÓƵ’s Council on Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health, recently turned to AI to inspire his own training as a runner. It worked out well. “I thought it developed a pretty nice program that aligns with anything that I would expect to get if I paid a coach to do it.”

Dr. Laura A. Richardson, a clinical associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, has informally tested a popular chatbot’s advice in the classroom alongside the students she trains to write exercise prescriptions.

When they’ve compared the AI responses to what professional guidelines would recommend, she has been “pleasantly surprised” – the chatbot has shown itself to be capable of “insightful” recommendations.

But whether an average person should turn to AI-based tools “really depends on the context of their health,” she said.

Should AI help guide your workout?

Diaz, director of the Exercise Testing Laboratory at Columbia’s Center for Behavioral Cardiovascular Health, sees several areas where AI might be helpful:

• As a starting place for somebody who wants to begin an exercise program – and can use it correctly, he said.
• As an alternative for someone who doesn’t have access to a personal trainer. Diaz emphasized that chatbots are not as good as an in-person coach, “but if you don’t have the means or the time and resources to have somebody help you develop a program, I think this is a great place to go.”
• As a way for an experienced exerciser to revamp their routine.

That’s how Diaz used it. He told the chatbot he felt stuck in a rut with his running and was having a hard time getting into top gear. He wanted some workouts to help him hone that ability. “It gave me some suggestions that I hadn’t thought about.”

Richardson said that with the right prompts, most AI platforms should be capable of reinforcing why exercise is important and offering creative ways of doing it.

What are the risks of using AI to guide your workout?

In Richardson’s classroom, chatbots generated accurate but “cookie cutter” advice on starting an exercise program. “You definitely are just getting a machine-generated response,” she said.

One study, published in 2024 in the journal , found that AI-generated exercise recommendations were about 90% accurate in terms of matching widely established facts but only about 40% comprehensive. So while Richardson believes that although something is better than nothing when it comes to exercise, “we don’t want to take someone who’s unfit or sedentary and just have them jump into the deep end, either.”

An Ãå±±ÊÓƵ published in the journal Circulation in November that examined the use of AI in health care noted limits in the way AI tools are evaluated for safety, fairness and other issues.

Richardson said safety is a concern particularly with people who are recovering from a heart attack or other cardiac issue or physical injury. So check with your health care team before beginning a workout routine is important, she said, because AI can’t replace a medical professional.

“I wouldn’t feel safe totally endorsing AI for someone with underlying disease,” Richardson said, nor would she recommend somebody use AI to replace formal cardiac rehab.

AI can also be too cautious at times, Diaz said. But he agreed that getting clearance from a physician is vital. “It’s important to acknowledge that these programs aren’t perfect, and they are prone to make mistakes in certain scenarios.”

Richardson sees AI as being most helpful to people in the middle of the fitness spectrum. Low-fitness beginners with an underlying health condition and elite athletes both need levels of human oversight that she’s not seen AI do well.

“It can give you a lot of decent ideas,” she said, but for safety’s sake, with those groups in particular, “we want to really be careful.”

Why can’t current AI tools replace a human trainer yet?

A chatbot can’t monitor your workout in real time, Diaz said, and it can’t motivate and encourage you the way a person can.

Richardson agreed – AI can’t match an experienced, in-person trainer.

It’s one thing to draw up a plan for a beginner that involves doing a squat, Richardson said, but it’s another to see whether the person is doing a squat properly, whether their arms are swinging while using a treadmill or whether their hand grip is safe while they lift weights.

AI also can’t make rapid adjustments. It can’t pick up on signs that you might need a break or need to modify the intensity of your workout. “All of those things are going to be done best by an expert,” Richardson said.

How do you craft a prompt to get the best exercise advice from AI?

Research has shown that the more information you feed AI, the closer your advice will be to “gold standard recommendations,” Diaz said.

Be specific in your prompt with what you want, he said. Also, it’s important to give it an identity. Tell it, “I want you to be a personal trainer” or “I want you to be a weight loss coach with 10 years of experience.”

Asking a chatbot for a resistance training program to build muscle might yield generic advice, Diaz said. But a prompt that says how much resistance training you currently do, the maximum weight you can lift, the muscles you want to target, what equipment you have access to, other types of exercise you do, and your goals in the next three to six months will probably deliver something more tailored.

Richardson has seen better results from feeding specifics about age, medical history, how active someone is and exercises they like, whether it’s swimming or pickleball.

“The machine is only going to be as smart as a user that’s inputting those specifics,” she said.

How can you be sure the exercise advice you get from AI is accurate?

AI hallucinates. “Sometimes it just makes stuff up,” Diaz said.

So among his prompts, he asks, “Can you give me your references? Where did you pull this information?”

Once you see a reference, don’t take the AI’s word for it. Look it up. Many times, Diaz has tried to check a reference, and it didn’t exist.

Overall, is using AI in your workout wise?

“I probably need to be more measured and cautious, but I’m excited” about AI’s potential to help with exercise, said Diaz, who declared himself in favor of “anything that’s going to help people just move more.”

The Ãå±±ÊÓƵ recommends adults get at least 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise, 75 minutes a week of vigorous aerobic exercise, or a combination of both. Those who are able should also do muscle-strengthening activities of moderate to high intensity at least two days per week.

Diaz, who recently led research demonstrating after a cardiac emergency, acknowledged that AI poses real concerns – about safety, accuracy and the possibility people will use it “as a crutch” that keeps them from being mindful about what they’re doing.

“We’re going to need some clear guidance for people on how to prompt it appropriately,” he said, “but at the end of the day, to me, the benefits vastly outweigh any potential harm.”

Richardson said whether the topic is using a chatbot as a guide or a fitness app to track steps, it’s important to remember that exercise technology is a tool, not the goal. She advises clients to focus on how exercise makes them feel.

“The more we move, the better we are, the more fit we are, the longer we live,” she said. “All of these great things happen with movement.”