AI cameras have entered one of the most private rooms in the home. In this episode of The Daily AI Chat, we examine the rise of smart-toilet devices that record what lands in the bowl, use artificial intelligence to analyze stool and urine, and turn bathroom habits into a subscription-based health dashboard.
The episode is based on Gabriela Galvin’s September 3, 2026 reporting for WIRED, “Smart Toilets Are Already Using AI to Analyze Your Poop.” Companies including Kohler Health and Throne are selling camera-equipped devices that clip onto existing toilets. Their algorithms assess factors such as stool consistency and color, hydration, and patterns over time, then send the results to an app. Kohler Health’s device costs $449 with a $130 annual family membership; Throne’s costs $399 plus $70 per year.
The companies say continuous monitoring can establish a personal baseline and reveal changes that a one-time test may miss. A user might discover recurring dehydration, connect digestive symptoms with diet or medication changes, or keep the kind of stool log physicians often request from people with inflammatory bowel disease. Throne is also developing multispectral imaging intended to detect blood that is difficult to see with the naked eye. Kohler says its current tracker can already alert users when it detects blood.
Could that help identify colorectal cancer earlier? The possibility is compelling because colorectal cancer has been rising among younger adults. But possibility is not proof. The products are not designed to diagnose disease, and experts stress that any cancer-screening claim must be validated in clinical studies and compared with established laboratory tests. A false positive could generate panic and unnecessary medical procedures, while a false negative could provide dangerous reassurance.
For healthy people with regular bowel movements, gastroenterologists interviewed by WIRED question whether the AI provides much value. Daniel Freedberg, a spokesperson for the American Gastroenterological Association, argues that most people can simply look at their own stool. Gianluca Ianiro notes that an effective population-screening tool must be inexpensive as well as noninvasive—and a device costing hundreds of dollars plus an annual fee is not inexpensive.
Then there is privacy. Stool and urine can reveal unusually intimate information about health, medication, diet, pregnancy, bleeding, and disease risk. These systems combine those signals with personal information such as names and demographics. Kohler Health also collects precise location, while Throne says it does not. According to the companies’ privacy policies, data may still be shared with service providers, law enforcement, or another company during a merger or sale. Both companies say they do not use health information for targeted advertising and do not plan to sell it without permission.
Long-term tracking can also lock customers into paying indefinitely to access insights generated from their own bodies.
This Deep Dive separates wellness marketing from established medicine. We explore who could genuinely benefit from automated monitoring, what evidence would make the technology clinically trustworthy, how regulators should treat AI-generated health alerts, whether sensitive data should ever be available to law enforcement, and what happens if a smart-toilet startup shuts down or gets acquired.
The global gut-health market is expected to approach $106 billion by 2029, giving companies a powerful incentive to make stool monitoring the next wearable-style category. The question is whether smart toilets are a meaningful preventive-health breakthrough—or an expensive, privacy-heavy solution looking for a problem.
Source: WIRED, published September 3, 2026. Reporting by Gabriela Galvin.
