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Online AI help

Food photos and meal descriptions with your consent.

Online AI help sends a meal photo, or a meal you describe in words, to an online AI service and uses the answer. Forma never needs it for your numbers: you log every meal by search, barcode or by hand. Nothing goes to an AI service unless you allow it and ask.

Forma asks once, before anything is sent, and you can switch it off again at any time.

When to use it

  • You are eating something with no barcode and no label, and a photo would save you typing.
  • You cooked a one-pan meal and want to describe it in a sentence rather than look up each part.
  • You want coach messages and Ask Coach answers worded more like a coach would word them.
  • You hold Forma Power. Online AI help is Power only: on Core, Forma contacts no online AI service.

Step by step

  1. On Fuel, tap the plus at the top right (Add food) to open the Add food sheet.
  2. Tap Photo, then Take photo or Choose from library. Or tap Describe, type what you ate, and tap Estimate it.
  3. If you have not allowed online AI yet, the Online AI help sheet appears first. Tap Allow, or Not now to leave it off. Nothing is sent while you read it.
  4. The reading runs in the background, about 30 seconds, and you can keep logging. When it is done the card in Fuel says Ready to check; tap Check.
  5. Look at what came back: it is a draft, and you can change any part of it. The app adds the totals, not the model.
  6. Tap Save to Dinner (the button names the meal you are logging), or Discard to drop the estimate and log it another way.
  7. Later, manage it in Settings > AI help: one switch, Online AI help.

The sheet is titled Online AI help. It opens when Power becomes active, when you turn the switch on, or on its own just before the first online use. Three short lines sit on top:

  • Sent: the meal photos and descriptions, and the coach questions, that you ask online AI to read.
  • Never sent: your watch data, or anything worked out from it.
  • The third line says an online AI service does the work through Forma's own secure server, which keeps nothing, and that you can turn it off any time in Settings > AI help.

Details opens the full text: this is optional, and Forma keeps working on your iPhone without it. It lists what is sent when you use it: a meal photo or description you ask Forma to read, the text you type when you ask the coach, and a substitute request with the exercise and its candidate exercises. It says that your Garmin and watch data are never sent, nor your name, your diary or your history. It says that Forma reaches the service only through its own secure server, which keeps nothing you send. Anything it reads or estimates is a draft you check, while the numbers behind your targets come from your iPhone. You can withdraw at any time in Settings > AI help.

The sheet also links to Read the privacy page. Forma records which version of this wording you agreed to, so if the text changes it asks again.

Good to know

Something unclear or missing? Write to and say which page.