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I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected

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Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected

#3
post #2

These apps look gimmicky but they are growing like crazy. CalAI, for example, is making 35M+/yr. I’m hoping that some people really find value in these apps and that they are not just a pure marketing driven play.

They provide value in that they lie to you and you feel better about yourself.

Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected

#4
post #2

These apps look gimmicky but they are growing like crazy. CalAI, for example, is making 35M+/yr. I’m hoping that some people really find value in these apps and that they are not just a pure marketing driven play.

> CalAI, for example, is making 35M+/yr.

Source?

Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected

#5
Gimmicky my ass. I speak a sentence every night on a thread to ChatGPT about what I had for breakfast, lunch and dinner along with quantities and it spits out my macros and nutritional breakdowns effectively. It’s the easiest and most no nonsense way I have found to record this information. Since it’s all on the same thread it always outputs the data in the same format and I can ask it for information over custom time ranges on the fly. I’ve also uploaded the nutritional labels for all my protein shakes and supplements to the same thread so I can just say “I had my nighttime shake” and it knows what I am talking about immediately.

Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected

#6
post #2

These apps look gimmicky but they are growing like crazy. CalAI, for example, is making 35M+/yr. I’m hoping that some people really find value in these apps and that they are not just a pure marketing driven play.

I wouldn't trust the revenue numbers, plus the churn is probably insanely high. Flashes in the pan

Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected

#7

Gimmicky my ass. I speak a sentence every night on a thread to ChatGPT about what I had for breakfast, lunch and dinner along with quantities and it spits out my macros and nutritional breakdowns effectively. It’s the easiest and most no nonsense way I have found to record this information. Since it’s all on the same thread it always outputs the data in the same format and I can ask it for information over custom tim…

>I speak a sentence every night on a thread to ChatGPT about what I had for breakfast, lunch and dinner along with quantities and it spits out my macros and nutritional breakdowns effectively.

Have you verified that these are mostly accurate?

Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected

#8
post #3
post #2

These apps look gimmicky but they are growing like crazy. CalAI, for example, is making 35M+/yr. I’m hoping that some people really find value in these apps and that they are not just a pure marketing driven play.

They provide value in that they lie to you and you feel better about yourself.

That’s exactly what I was thinking when I read the article. ”Why are you thinking this is meant to work?”. But of course, normal trusting people will believe it if it’s on the ”trusted app stores”.

These apps with graphs are just selling you a sense of control, of compulsive metric driven decision making. Its partly the consumers’ own fault – many people won’t care even if they knew. But it’s also predatory by the companies. It’s consumer tech in a nutshell: put a pretty but shitty app on the App Store, spend 80% on marketing, show ads in the free tier, sell overpriced premium offerings to those who are careless with money, rinse and repeat. I follow some subreddits and groups for ”entrepreneurs” and it’s just like this.

Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected

#9
I like how in the article the author includes the instructions for Cal AI: - Include a reference object (like a coin or your hand) for scale And then the screenshots show just a pictures of bowls of food with no reference objects at all.

Honestly curious if that would have improved the author's experience.

Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected

#10

I like how in the article the author includes the instructions for Cal AI: - Include a reference object (like a coin or your hand) for scale And then the screenshots show just a pictures of bowls of food with no reference objects at all. Honestly curious if that would have improved the author's experience.

I noticed that too - I wonder if the coin/hand was cropped out?
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