Apple to scale back AI health coach, set to integrate it into Health app instead?
Apple has reportedly scrapped its AI-powered health coach project, internally known as Mulberry, according to sources familiar with the matter. It seems that this is part of Cupertino’s effort to rethink their approach on the wellness services market.
The company had spent years developing the service, which was designed to generate detailed health reports and AI-driven recommendations using data from Apple Watches, iPhones, and lab results. The launch, originally planned for iOS 26, had been delayed multiple times and is now no longer going ahead as a single service.
Instead, Apple plans to roll out individual features gradually within its Health app. This decision comes as services chief Eddy Cue began taking over the health division at Cupertino, following the retirement of longtime Apple executive Jeff Williams late last year.
Cue wants Apple to move faster in the health and wellness services scene, citing rivals such as Oura Health and Whoop having more useful features even in their own iOS apps. Cue was also of the opinion that their current plan for a new health service wasn’t that great. Another of Cue’s plans include changes and updates to Apple Fitness+, their premium fitness subscription.
The AI-powered virtual health coach project was supposed to have debuted with iOS 26 last year, but would ended up being delayed till spring. It then got postponed again, and before being scrapped was originally scheduled to debut alongside iOS 27 in September.
It seemed that Cupertino originally wanted the project to deliver a system that could generate a detailed health report with AI-driven recommendations for users to improve their wellbeing. They even built a new content studio in California to produce videos for the Health app, which would help explain medical conditions, wellness education and training guides.
It seems likely that the video content will be repurposed into the normal Health app later this year.vThere remains plans however for an AI chatbot that users can talk to to ask questions about their health, drawing on an internal system dubbed World Knowledge Answers.
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