Strava Athlete Intelligence…

Have we done this yet?

Just uploaded my latest ride and now Strava is blowing smoke up my arse. Have I been chosen for some random beta programme or does everyone see this?

Apologies for the humblebrag if everyone else is getting a bollocking for not trying hard enough 😉

Mine talked about « scenic views and historical landmarks at a low speed compared to my recent average. »   Which is true, but so what.

Seems like another case of AI doing what AI does, even if it isn’t very useful in real life.

It’s hilarious – they even adjusted for Australia.

Go me…

Have I been chosen for some random beta programme or does everyone see this?

It is a beta programme but all subscribers get it. Mine is struggling to work out why I’m doing fewer miles this week compared to last week and keeps telling me to get back out there and “crush it”.

It clearly hasn’t worked out that last week I was on a cycling holiday in Spain and this week I’m at home and have to do a normal job…

Looks like they love the word “crush” meaning I will be turning it off as soon as possible.

I quite like that you can track activity in, multiple disciplines over the last week, month year etc. Although it still can’t tell you how far you’ve walked this calendar year.

What’s the opposite of FOMO? That.

Thanks Strava, I hate it. Luckily you can opt out for now, maybe if enough people do they’ll reconsider the feature.

https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/26786795557005-Athlete-Intelligence-on-Strava-Beta

Can I opt out of Athlete Intelligence?

Yes, from your activity details page, tap “Say More” then click “Share Feedback” and then “Leave the Beta.”

Yeah I was congratulated yesterday for “pushing myself to the limit” on my 60k road ride. In fact I spent the whole 2hrs cruising round flat lanes chatting to my mate. But, I have had time off due to illness lately so if it was comparing yesterday’s effort to the last few weeks, I guess it may have seemed like a big one.

I’m not necessarily against it in principle- Trainerroad uses AI in its coaching more and more and seems to work pretty well.

I guess the Strava AI could get a lot better in time, the more people use it? Maybe its too early to judge, IMO.

This isn’t particularly wrong, but neither is it useful in any way. Maybe it will get better with more training.

It’s a shame they waste resource on this, and not a highly popular suggestion for personal results filtered by bike.

Opted out once I found out how

Feels like they felt they had to add something AI, but couldn’t find anything useful it could do….

This isn’t particularly wrong, but neither is it useful in any way. Maybe it will get better with more training.

This describes both many applications of LLMs and the optimism wildly inflating the bubble.

It doesn’t offend me like some but it’s a bit pointless and the over hyped nature of the wording is naff.

It’s not that insightful about performance, I certainly don’t need to be told what I did in terms of pace and sprints, I know that. Telling me about how effectively I’m recovering from efforts mid ride might be useful but it doesn’t do much more than tell me what I can read from the graphs anyway.

In reality, I bumbled round Wetopia in a state of half-arsed apathetic grumpiness and was solidly in zone 2 at pretty much all times. It’s also factually incorrect, unless ‘the last month’ actually means ‘so far this month’ in AI world, in that I’ve done rides over twice the distance.

I didn’t know it was there until I read this thread and I kind of wished I’d stayed that way. Pointless gimmickry and utterly useless to me.

Opted out once I found out how

For anyone who wants to opt out, under the pointless word soup there’s a button that says “Give Feedback”, tap that and you get a list of options with “Leave the beta” as the last one. Choose that.

Ah, just noticed that’s already been posted above.

Because of my stupid walk title, it thinks my dog is called Moretti. It should tell me I’m a lush. And high heart rate on an amble…..nah

What’s the opposite of FOMO? That.

FOMI I think.

I did a ride with a friend yesterday, someone a fair bit slower than me. We bimbled round on our gravel bikes , had coffee and cake and then Strava informed me that my ride showed a dip in speed and distance compared to normal.

I’m not sure I needed AI to tell me that…

“AI”  just keeps on disappointing…This is going to take over the world?

“AI”  just keeps on disappointing…This is going to take over the world?

I’m looking forward to a STW forum AI posting engine, which asks you roughly what you want to post then churns out a missive containing a variety of classic STW cliches.

Short-cuts like ‘disagree vehemently with the previous poster’ / ‘say that whatever I use – insert name of component / item here – is ‘the bestest’ / etc. What could possibly go wrong? And think of the time saved.

It’s just dismal, isn’t it? You can’t even turn off the existing congratulatory notifications, why would I want more of these amazing insights? Hopefully it will go rogue and start hurling out random insults:

“You live in Preston? God, what a dump, no wonder you’ve just posted your fastest ever 10Kms riding away from it! Make sure you lock up your bike properly when you get back!”

Saw this on Saturday. It seems an utterly pointless application of an LLM – it took my activity title & description and regurgitated it back to me using 100 words.

This feature isn’t for users, it’s to appease internal stakeholders who think Strava should be embracing AI.

Maybe this will become some sort of AI personal coach that you will have to pay for!

Maybe this will become some sort of AI personal coach that you will have to pay for!

Not with the level of insight it’s providing at the moment.

half-arsed apathetic grumpiness

You’ve just described me to a T 🙁

 It seems an utterly pointless application of an LLM – it took my activity title & description and regurgitated it back to me using 100 words.

Probably burned more watts of power generating that than I did in the ride.

As it seems to be just Strava Athletes that get this then you already are paying for this…

I went for a ride. Just riding around, that’s all. I did spend a week of cycling quite long but slow days because, why not? That likely skewed my recent average speed. But this weird word soup is my reward? I should have stayed in bed.

No, I am not “crushing it” or any of that other nonsense.

It pointed out that my ride (on my gravel bike) was slower than my recent rides but then praised me for having “a tactical recovery day”.

It didn’t mention anything about crushing it this time though.

Looks like they love the word “crush” meaning I will be turning it off as soon as possible.

Looks like there’s no way to crush it, sorry, turn it off, none that I can see anyway. Same as the auto-generated ‘Kudos on another ride!’ garbage notifications.

As analysis goes, the algorithm appears to be ‘look at ride title’, see if they are faster/slower than average, come up with paragraph of nonsense. I reckon you could probably corrupt it into pure filth by ‘adapting’ your ride title.

Strava has always been shitty in terms of appearance and useability. I notice that it has now consumed Fatmap, but, despite promises, there are no signs of its functionality anywhere on the app.

I’m curious just how many people are paying for Strava now?

I honestly don’t feel like I’m missing out TBH, as on the thread last night, there’s plenty of other free ways to find routes and maps, Garmin will supply a ‘training plan‘  for you to not complete for free and “insights”  are gained by just reviewing whatever data you gather from a ride for yourself, LLM AI doesn’t seem to be revolutionising much TBH.

Not with the level of insight it’s providing at the moment.

Presumably given the shear amount of data that’s fed into Strava, at some point they’ll be able to offer some really hyper personalized training plans?  The first step would be it has to trawl through years of data looking for words like “recovery ride”, “sweet spot” “FTP interval” etc and find the common features in those rides and work out what the impact of doing those sessions is so it can learn what a training plan is supposed to look like and what actually works in the real world.

Then in the future you could tell Strava to target a CX race, it could look at last years entrants and figure out the best combination of extra training sessions that got you the best position it could.

After all, any training plan is just the distilled knowledge of the coach who has 10 or 100 riders to draw conclusions of what worked and what didn’t from.  Imagine doing that but with millions?

Looks like there’s no way to crush it, sorry, turn it off,

There is a way to turn it off, I’m not getting this on any recent rides since I opted out by following the instructions posted earlier in this thread….

https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/26786795557005-Athlete-Intelligence-on-Strava-Beta

Can I opt out of Athlete Intelligence?

Yes, from your activity details page, tap “Say More” then click “Share Feedback” and then “Leave the Beta.”

I’m curious just how many people are paying for Strava now?

Me! I still enjoy chasing PBs and leaderboard positions sometimes (sue me) and the route planner still appears a cut above the rest, if only for the heat map.

That being said, Strava seems to have reduced the timespan for contributing rides to heatmap so it doesn’t show as much as it used to.

I’m now ALSO paying for Komoot as the ‘Collections’ feature is pretty cool, but if I had to choose just one it would still be Strava.

And yes, the AI function is pathetic.

@pothead Cheers, would never have found that.