Can artificial intelligence help you get fit?

With a great many of us now trying to lose weight as a New Year's resolution, can artificial intelligence (AI) personal trainers replace human ones?

"I'd never set foot in a gym before," says Varun Bhanot, the chief executive of AI fitness software firm Magic AI. "I found it too intimidating. It's also very expensive, and inconvenient when you've got to travel to get there."

When Mr Bhanot was told a few years back that he needed to lose weight or face health problems, he transformed his life with the help of a personal trainer - a human one.

But it dawned on Mr Bhanot that advice from an AI fitness chatbot, available to people in their own homes, could make a healthy lifestyle more accessible. So, in 2021, he set up Magic AI.

Its main product, the Magic Mirror, is a touch-screen mirror that also plays a video of an AI-powered trainer in human form.