Popular multisport fitness tracker Strava has unveiled a bunch of upcoming innovations at its annual event, Camp Strava, including a dark mode, an AI-enabled integrity leaderboard and a family plan – reportedly three of the most requested features among its 125 million users.
The theme of the event is “Progress, Together” and the brand is making some ambitious claims about the way they hope to empower their global community to make progress in the way they explore, move and connect on Strava.
“Strava is gaining momentum to realize our vision of a world connected through movement,” said Michael Martin, chief executive officer of Strava, who added that “building for women and leveraging Artificial Intelligence” would be fundamental in unlocking new community-and-partner-powered experiences across the platform.
The first of new updates announced is AI-enabled Leaderboard Integrity, which is supposed to address a problem that has irked many Strava users for some time – fake stats. The new features will harness machine learning to automatically flag irregular, improbable or impossible activities recorded to the platform. Trained by millions of activities, the aim of the feature is to help Strava users to play fair and have more fun.
The AI doesn't stop there, either. Strava are also introducing Athlete Intelligence, a beta feature which, they claim, turns subscribers' training data into "an easily digestible summary that contextualizes their accomplishments and fitness goals".
Users will also be relieved to hear that Strava have introduced a Dark Mode, to reduce eye strain when they’re trying to check out data while out in the dark or low-light situations. Athletes can expect a rollout of this feature later this summer with options to keep their mobile settings always dark, always light or to match their device settings.
Additionally, Strava have announced a new Family Plan subscription, the sister of the company’s Student Plan. With Family Plan, you can share an annual subscription with up to three other people – friends, family or anyone in your fitness family. It will launch in select countries this summer, with plans to roll out globally by the end of the year.
At their event, Strava also highlighted several other features and updates to current products like Flyover, with its next iteration offering an overlay with activity stats and off-platform sharing capabilities. The overlay is available today for Strava subscribers and an off-platform sharing option will be released later this year.
The company also claims that several new initiatives designed to benefit women using the platform will ultimately serve everyone in the Strava community. They include:
- Night Heatmaps Strava claim this function will give you an idea of which roads, trails and paths are used at night by only showing activities that take place after dark.
- Quick Edit This feature is designed to give you more control over what's visible online by making it easier to make common edits - such as your start time or your route map.
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