DUDEs are in their tracking era. Your watch knows how you slept, your phone knows how many steps you took, and your ring knows whether your heart rate spiked when your boss requested a “quick call” at 4:57 p.m.
Now, Silicon Valley has identified the final frontier: your dumps.
Companies are now selling cameras that attach to your toilet, watch what you leave behind, and use AI to analyze your poop. (Before you duct-tape your laptop webcam shut, the cameras are pointed into the bowl, not at your junk).
Still, your toilet is officially watching.
Your Poop Now Has Analytics
One of these devices is called Throne, which costs $399 (plus a membership after the first three months). It clips onto the rim of your toilet and uses a downward-facing optical sensor, along with an acoustic sensor, to monitor what happens in the bowl.
When a registered user approaches, Throne can recognize their paired phone and activate. Its sensors capture information from the bathroom session, which gets analyzed by AI models. A few minutes later, the app can show information about your stool consistency and frequency, hydration, urinary flow, and bathroom habits.
Basically, you take a dump and receive a performance review.
The idea is to establish your personal baseline and track changes over time. Maybe your hydration consistently tanks on weekends. Maybe Taco Tuesday is creating a Wipe Wednesday situation. Instead of relying on your memory, you've got months of hard data from the hardest-working bowl in your house.
Do You Actually Need AI to Look at Your Poop?
Despite what critics say, this technology isn't completely useless.
People with gastrointestinal conditions are often asked to track bowel movements, and manually documenting every dump isn't a habit most people are excited to maintain.
Companies are also exploring more serious applications. Kohler Health says its toilet tracker can flag possible blood in the bowl. Throne has discussed developing similar blood-detection capabilities, with the hope that patterns could give people another reason to talk with their doctor.
But for the average healthy DUDE, the benefits are less obvious.
Gastroenterologist Daniel Freedberg told WIRED the technology seemed like “overkill” for healthy people with regular bowel movements, pointing out that you can simply look at your own stool.
Fair point.
These devices aren't replacements for medical screening or diagnosis. Throne itself describes its product as a general wellness device rather than something intended to diagnose or treat disease.
So if something concerning is happening downstairs, talk to a doctor rather than waiting for your toilet's algorithm to weigh in.
The Poop Privacy Problem
Putting a camera inside your toilet raises one predictable concern: Who gets to see your shit?
Throne says its camera faces downward and uses privacy filters intended to “reduce the risk” of capturing human anatomy. Its privacy policy acknowledges that accidental capture is still possible. The company also says it doesn't sell health information or use it for targeted advertising, and users can request deletion of their data.
That's reassuring.
It's also a sentence nobody expected to need in a toilet's privacy policy.
Before buying any bathroom tracker, it's worth reading exactly what information gets collected, where it's processed, who it can be shared with, and what happens if you stop paying.
Throne, for example, says its device becomes inactive without a membership, although previously collected data remains accessible.
We've officially reached the point where your bowel movements have terms and conditions.
Welcome to the Future of Pooping
There may be people who get legit value from automatically tracking their dumps. But most DUDES don't need a $400 computer confirming that last night's gas-station burrito was a mistake.
Either way, the smart toilet has arrived.
Just remember: No matter how intelligent the toilet gets, it still can't wipe your ass.
We know some people who can help with that.
