Healthify, a health startup backed by Khosla Ventures, has unveiled an upgraded version of its AI health assistant, Ria, which now includes real-time conversation capabilities. This advancement allows users to engage with Ria through voice interaction and visual input via a camera, significantly enhancing the user experience for tracking health and fitness.
The new features leverage OpenAI‘s technology, enabling Ria to support more than 50 languages, including 14 Indian languages. Furthermore, the AI can recognize mixed language inputs, such as Hinglish and Spanglish, making it accessible to a broader audience. Users can now request health overviews for specific time frames, such as daily, weekly, or monthly summaries, and receive insights by aggregating data from various sources like fitness trackers and glucose monitors.
Innovative Features and Integration
Ria’s enhanced functionality includes the ability to log meals through camera input, similar to Google Gemini’s Live Conversation mode. During a demonstration, Healthify showcased how users could interact with Ria using Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, allowing for seamless meal logging in real-time. The startup aims to make users feel more comfortable engaging with the assistant, enabling them to obtain insights, generate exercise plans, and log their goals during the same session.
One notable feature is Ria’s ability to describe meals for users who may forget to log their food intake, simplifying the tracking process. Healthify plans to incorporate the conversational assistant into user onboarding, allowing for the collection of insights from unstructured conversations. This approach mirrors tactics used by modern dating apps to enhance user experiences.
Future Developments and Market Position
As part of its strategy, Healthify is developing a persistent memory layer over OpenAI’s models, enabling Ria to retain long-term context regarding user preferences and health changes. The assistant will also facilitate conversations between users and their coaches or nutritionists, providing insights and transcribing calls for better understanding.
According to Healthify’s CEO, Tushar Vashisht, Ria was trained on years of conversational data between coaches and users to deliver accurate advice. The startup believes that the combination of live conversation, data aggregation, and an extensive training dataset positions it advantageously against competitors like MyFitnessPal and Cal AI.
The company, which has over 45 million registered users and millions of active monthly users, is launching a new AI plan in the United States featuring the updated Ria assistant, priced at $20 per month. Prior to this rollout, Healthify tested various plans with text-based AI and certified nutrition coaches.
Looking ahead, Healthify intends to announce partnerships centered around its GLP-1-aided weight loss programs and collaborate with health tracking device companies to integrate their data into Ria. Vashisht mentioned that the company may soon pursue a new funding round to capitalize on its growing popularity in the U.S. market.
With these advancements, Healthify is poised to redefine how users interact with health tracking technologies, fostering a more engaging and supportive health ecosystem.