AI toilets

Even Toilets Can Read Images Now — Giants Sell Them, Would You Dare to Sit?

Honghao Wang

— 4 min read
Even Toilets Can Read Images Now — Giants Sell Them, Would You Dare to Sit?

AI Meets the Bathroom: Turning Waste into Health Data

Poop, pee, and urine are valuable data — bathroom giants are now putting AI into toilets, betting on “passive, zero-interaction” health monitoring.

It’s often said that when Japanese buyers purchase property in Hong Kong, there’s an invisible must-have: a TOTO smart toilet.

With heated seats, gentle cleansing, and ambient sounds to mask noise, TOTO has elevated a basic daily act into a refined lifestyle ritual.

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Now, this sense of sophistication is shifting into high-tech territory — thanks to AI-powered waste analysis.

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Kohler’s Dekoda: AI Vision Inside Your Toilet

Imagine sitting down, and a discreet in-bowl camera switches on, recording your morning business.

Within seconds, algorithms analyze stool and urine, sending results straight to your phone.

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Dekoda Key Highlights:

  • Price: USD $599 (plus subscription)
  • AI visual analysis of stool and urine
  • Alerts for suspicious bleeding, hydration levels
  • Recognition of constipation, diarrhea, inflammation, or potential IBS
  • Fingerprint sensor for multi-user identification
  • Battery or USB power support
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Dekoda promises low-friction health monitoring:

  • No manual inputs
  • Objective, frequent sampling of real-world data
  • End-to-end encryption and downward-facing camera for privacy
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Throne: Startup Competition in the AI Toilet Space

Austin-based Throne is another player, backed by a $4M seed round (including cyclist Lance Armstrong).

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Throne Highlights:

  • Downward-facing camera capturing only waste
  • Analysis of shape, color, flow speed, moisture
  • Proprietary Artificial Gut Intelligence algorithm
  • Pre-mass-production stage; first launch planned for January 2026

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Pioneering Research: Sam Gambhir’s Smart Toilet

Over a decade ago, Stanford professor Sanjiv “Sam” Gambhir envisioned a toilet with user identification via anal recognition.

The prototype:

  • Captured video for urodynamic parameters: flow rate, voiding time, total volume
  • Integrated dual high-speed cameras for standing urination
  • Urine test strip module to detect infections, cancer, or kidney failure risk
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The Prototype Monitoring Process

  • Anal scan for identity verification
  • Pressure sensors track sitting duration and bowel timing
  • Urine stream width/force measurement
  • Color detection for healthy volume ranges
  • Fingerprint sensor as backup identity method
  • Data sent to cloud-based health portal

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Waste as a Health Goldmine

The human gut hosts 100 trillion bacteria, outnumbering our own cells.

They:

  • Aid digestion
  • Regulate immunity and metabolism
  • Influence mood and cognition
  • Produce metabolites — chemical messengers connected to health

Waste biomarkers like calprotectin, lactoferrin, and SCFAs reveal inflammation, recurrence risk, and treatment response — vital for chronic GI conditions like Crohn’s disease and IBS.

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Industry Positioning

Smart toilet makers focus on:

  • Early detection, not replacement of medical diagnosis
  • Target users: elderly, and patients with chronic digestive disorders

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Your Toilet: A Passive Health Monitoring Portal

Going to the toilet is non-negotiable — unlike wearables, it’s a guaranteed interaction point.

Benefits:

  • Passive data collection
  • Continuous monitoring
  • No behavioral changes required

Challenges:

  • Privacy concerns
  • Trust barriers in ultra-private contexts

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Privacy Approaches

  • Throne: Only bowl images, algorithm deletes irrelevant frames, no PII stored
  • TOTO: No cameras; optical LED scanner measures shape, color, and volume without capturing people or external objects
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From Lab to Consumer: Key Hurdles

Duke University’s Smart Toilet Lab achieved:

  • 94% accuracy in abnormal stool identification
  • 81% sensitivity, 95% specificity

Real-world challenges:

  • Variable lighting, dirty lenses
  • Different toilet designs
  • Avoiding false positives/negatives
  • Multi-user data handling

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Business Models Emerging

Kohler Dekoda:

  • Device: $599
  • Subscription: $70–$156/year

Throne:

  • Device: $499 (early bird $299)
  • Subscription required for analysis

Current stage: “Nice to Have” rather than “Must Have” — due to:

  • Price
  • Privacy concerns
  • Nascent user habits

Future potential: Integration with:

  • Telemedicine
  • Insurance
  • Personalized nutrition

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The Bigger Picture

Smart toilets represent passive health entry points in the IoT health space.

Platforms like AiToEarn官网 can:

  • Help innovators publish health-tech content globally
  • Monetize AI-generated educational, marketing, and product materials
  • Reach audiences via Douyin, WeChat, Bilibili, Facebook, YouTube, etc.

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Takeaway

From optical LED scanners to anal recognition — AI toilets are:

  • Pushing privacy boundaries
  • Unlocking untapped biometrics
  • Creating continuous health data streams

Their future success will hinge not on the toilet itself, but on the ecosystem beyond it — linking bathroom data to wider healthcare, lifestyle, and insurance services.

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Would you like me to create a side-by-side comparison table of Kohler, Throne, and TOTO smart toilets for this article? It would make the features and differences much clearer.

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