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Question

The AI is mistakenly flagging my rides

  • May 9, 2025
  • 10 replies
  • 439 views

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Hi everyone,
Can someone help me understand what to do in this situation?

Strava’s AI recently started flagging fake rides, like delivery drivers on mopeds or people drafting behind cars — and that’s great. But unfortunately, the AI also seems unable to distinguish real sprint efforts.

Recently, about 20 of my activities were automatically flagged just because I hit speeds of 55–60+ km/h on certain segments. I’ve been training seriously for a long time. I ride a pure road bike, and I often use tailwinds and terrain to practice sprinting. For trained cyclists, reaching those speeds without any external assistance is very realistic — but apparently the AI doesn’t recognize that.

What should I do?😺


And the worst part is that it’s almost impossible to contact Strava support. You can technically submit a request, but it gets auto-closed immediately without resolving the issue.
It seems like many users have started reporting problems with the AI.

10 replies

anchskier
Superuser
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  • Superuser
  • 760 replies
  • May 9, 2025

Regarding the support requests, you are only able to have a single request open at one time.  Any subsequent requests will be merged with the original and the new ones will be closed.  You need to wait until you get a response/resolution from the first one before submitting new requests.  Unfortunately, they are receiving a lot of support requests and the response time is longer than most would like.  


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  • Author
  • Hub Rookie
  • 3 replies
  • May 9, 2025

Thank you! Honestly, this helped clarify the situation. I now realize that I just need to be patient and wait a bit longer — there might be a high volume of requests.
In the past, I submitted a few tickets and did get responses, even if they weren’t immediate.


Jan_Mantau
Superuser
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  • Superuser
  • 1751 replies
  • May 9, 2025

@Gratianys Are the complete activities flagged or segment efforts in them?


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  • Author
  • Hub Rookie
  • 3 replies
  • May 10, 2025

The entire training session was likely flagged due to specific segments with speeds over 50 km/h and sharp accelerations. I even split one of the sessions: the part without sprints remained unflagged, while the segment with powerful sprints received a flag

 


Jan_Mantau
Superuser
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  • Superuser
  • 1751 replies
  • May 11, 2025

That is indeed strange as this is a rather normal speed most road bike riders have now and then in their activities and I never saw those flagged for anyone. And it was really an AI flag and not some other athlete who flagged the rides? I’m trying to understand how the AI can be so wrong. Do you use a heart rate sensor and a powermeter?


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  • Author
  • Hub Rookie
  • 3 replies
  • May 12, 2025

That's a bit of a problem — I'm currently not using a heart rate monitor or power meter (they’re too expensive for me), although I did use a heart rate monitor in the past. I’ve been thinking about it too — this might be an additional factor contributing to the bias in the AI's judgment.


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  • Hub Starter
  • 6 replies
  • June 28, 2025

Same problem.  AI started flagging several of my legitimates rides in June.  Very annoying and no way to easily fix.


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  • Hub Starter
  • 6 replies
  • June 28, 2025

It used to be that one could select: “This activity is fine, trust me” but that option is no longer available for these incorrect AI flags.   Also I am not getting any emails that activities have been auto flagged so I am stumbling across them as I notice I am dropped from leaderboards.  There needs to be a systematic fix from Strava, backing out of these auto flags instead of having support address each and every one of these obviously incorrect flags.


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  • Hub Starter
  • 6 replies
  • July 3, 2025

How long should it take to get response on a support request?


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  • Hub Starter
  • 2 replies
  • October 23, 2025

This auto flagging issue is really annoying. I have two bikes- one with, one without powermeter. Lately, most of my rides without powermeter are autoflagged, especially if I do very hilly profiles without flat stretches and low average speeds. The (N)"AI" should at least be capable to estimate the capabilities of a rider by comparing his performances with a powermeter with the power estimates on non powermeter-rides, in order to evaluate non-likelyness of e-bike usage. I am extremely disappointed with this problem and would consider canceling my paid subscription, if it continues.