Apple Takes a Step Back, No AI Coach in the Health App

The Cupertino giant has decided to pull the brakes on one of its most ambitious initiatives in the digital wellness sector.

The plan to introduce a sophisticated AI-based assistant within the Health app, internally known as Project Mulberry, has been drastically scaled back.

What was meant to be a new frontier for interaction between user and biometric data, envisioned as a comprehensive virtual coaching service, will not come to light in the initially planned form, a victim of a deep strategic and managerial restructuring.

Health App, Apple Scales Back Its Plans for an AI Coach

The decision to shelve the project is the direct consequence of an organizational upheaval that has shaken the foundations of Apple’s leadership.

The withdrawal of Jeff Williams, longtime Chief Operating Officer who oversaw the sector, has handed the reins of the Health and Fitness teams to Eddy Cue, who is already in charge of services.

Meanwhile, the AI front is undergoing a critical transition: John Giannandrea, Senior Vice President for Machine Learning and AI Strategy, will leave the company in the spring of 2026.

His expertise and teams will be absorbed by the Software Engineering division led by Craig Federighi. These moves have necessitated a reassessment of priorities, prompting the new leadership to question the real effectiveness of what was in development.

The Competition and Doubts About the Strategy

According to Bloomberg’s reporting, it was Eddy Cue who raised the greatest concerns. The executive’s analysis highlighted that the original plan for the new health service was not sufficiently competitive compared with what the market already offers.

Rivals like Oura Health and WHOOP have built software ecosystems capable of providing deep analyses and practical advice directly on users’ smartphones, significantly raising the bar for quality.

For Cue, Apple’s proposal did not reach that level of excellence and usefulness necessary to stand out, which is why it was necessary to block the launch of a service that some employees unofficially called Health+.

The imperative now is to move with greater speed to bridge the technology gap with the competition.

What Remains of the Project?

Despite the halt of the full service, the work done for Project Mulberry will not be entirely discarded. Apple had invested significant resources, even building a production studio in Oakland, California, to create educational video content with the support of cardiologists, nutritionists and sleep specialists.

This material, originally intended to be the cornerstone of virtual coaching, will be retooled and introduced into the Health app, possibly as early as this year, to explain to users the trends detected in their health data.

Additionally, the AI vision will continue in other forms. The company is working on implementing targeted individual features, such as a system that will use the iPhone’s camera to analyze the user’s gait and a wellness-focused chatbot.

This latter will leverage an in-house technology named “World Knowledge Answers“, designed to compete with modern generative search engines.

Looking further ahead, with the arrival of iOS 27, an enhancement to Siri is expected, which will become able to handle complex health-related queries, integrating more deeply with the operating system.