Like any good gym, Lumin Fitness prides itself on the quality of its trainers. Chloe, an energetic young coach, promises to help you crush your fitness goals. The disciplined Rex, who has the air of a drill sergeant, encourages his clients to strive for excellence, but he is quick to warn that there won’t be any shortcuts. If you’re after a more mellow approach, Emma and Ethan are warm and quietly confident.
But Lumin Fitness is no ordinary gym. These trainers don’t exist—at least not physically. They’re virtual AI coaches, designed to guide gym goers through vigorous workouts on the tall LED screens that line the walls of the company’s first studio, which opened last month in Las Colinas, Texas.
While there will always be gym goers who will prefer interacting with human trainers, there is reason to believe that a lot of people wouldn’t mind being coached by AI systems, says Neil Cronin, a professor of exercise biology at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, who studies how AI techniques can improve human movement analysis.
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The recent rise of AI-powered therapy and companion bots show some people feel more comfortable interacting with machines than they might with fellow humans, he points out.
