Strava upgraded its AI out of beta and added better anti-cheating tools

michael.hicks@futurenet.com (Michael L Hicks)
2025-02-20 21:23:00
www.androidcentral.com

What you need to know

After a 4.5-month beta, Strava’s Athlete Intelligence is launching as a stable version with increased accuracy and new insights.
Strava is also improving its algorithm to prevent cheating or miscategorized activities on its segment leaderboards.
Other Strava updates include a new progress summary chart and a way to share your post-activity Flyover views to Instagram stories.

Strava’s Athlete Intelligence, which launched in beta last October, has achieved its first stable build this week. And it’s just one of several key changes coming to the Strava app.

Strava’s press release explains how Athlete Intelligence delivers “even more insights for a more tailored analysis of each upload” with the latest version. For instance, it can interpret “non-GPS activities” like treadmill runs or cycling power meter data for the first time.

More generally, if you frequently run the same route, Athlete Intelligence will “note how your pace or speed compared to other times on that route,” as well as call out any record distances or gold segments. And Strava is promising “more accurate insights with fewer mistakes” than Athlete Intelligence showed during beta.

In our testing, we initially noticed obvious mistakes, like Athlete Intelligence claiming that a 150bpm-average run was an anaerobic activity, but the insights have gotten more useful (and accurate) in recent weeks. Strava claims that 80+% of polled Strava subscribers “say that Athlete Intelligence is very helpful,” which is why they decided to take it out of beta.

Strava app showing Live Segment records

(Image credit: Michael Hicks / Android Central)

Strava also intends to improve its leaderboard algorithm to improve overall integrity. For instance, they’re analyzing results to “prevent bike rides on run leaderboards and ebikes on ride leaderboards.” Both accidental miscategorizations and intentional cheating are targeted.

“Every activity uploaded to Strava is now automatically analyzed by our machine learning model, which looks at 57 different factors, like speed and acceleration, to determine if any portion of an activity was recorded in a vehicle,” Strava explains.

On the lighter side of things, Strava will now let you share your post-run GPS Flyover summaries to Instagram Stories (or other platforms) for the first time. You can impress your friends with an eagle-eyed view of your epic rides, runs, and hikes, simply by clicking the Share button on the Activity Details Page; Instagram Stories will be a default option, but you can copy the Flyover link for other apps.

Finally, this February Strava update has revamped the Progress Summary Chart. In the You tab and Progress section, you can select a specific sport and time frame: one week, one month, three months, six months, year-to-date, or one year.

You’ll then see your cumulative distance, time, elevation, or activity count in that frame, and you can tap “Compare Date Range” to see how, for example, your 2024 stats compare to your 2023 stats.

Strava has made significant updates to its app in recent months, from Apple Fitness+ integration to Night Heatmaps to help you decide where it’s safe to run in the evening. But this new version of Athlete Intelligence, combined with Strava’s compatibility with all of the best fitness smartwatches, should only make Strava’s subscription even more popular with athletes.

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