Throne is an Austin-based health startup. It sells a camera. That clips onto the side of a toilet bowl. It takes pictures of your poop. Currently in beta, the system utilizes artificial intelligence to examine your dookie as a way of determining things like gut health and hydration.

Turns out we have a surprising amount to learn from our logs

Throne calls its underlying technology “artificial gut intelligence.” That AI is “trained by physicians to help you understand what your waste is trying to tell you about your health,” per the company. The doctors are looking for various signs of health found in waste matter, including “nuances” in urine to determine hydration levels.

“We do not access an individual’s data,” Throne adds. “Our team only analyzes anonymized, aggregated data, which means the data can’t be traced back to the original user — to you!”

Few of us expect to get into the toilet camera business. That much can be said about Throne’s founders. CEO Scott Hickle tells TechCrunch that the startup began life as a marketplace for healthcare staffing, only to realize almost immediately that it had entered an already overcrowded field.

If that sounds like you — and you’re able to get past the idea of mounting a camera to your toilet — Throne’s system is up for preorder following a limited beta. The going price for a smart toilet camera is $499, though the company is making it available for $299 if you want to get in on it early.

top 19 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] context@hexbear.net 16 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

“Within six weeks we came to the painful realization that the market was saturated and not a sandbox we wanted to play in,” says Hickle, “so we pivoted, and our investors were shockingly cool with us tackling consumer hardware.”

please introduce me to these investors i have many lucrative business ideas they may be interested in

[–] Cysioland@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 4 weeks ago

I feel like these dogshit bizarre investments gotta be some kind of a money laundering scheme or something

[–] UlyssesT@hexbear.net 4 points 3 weeks ago

painful realization that the market was saturated and not a sandbox we wanted to play in

These techbros aren't escaping the giggling affluent manchild stereotype.

[–] Evilsandwichman@hexbear.net 13 points 4 weeks ago

Yes; this is the kind of stuff I want NSA staff or FBI being forced by management to look through to learn more about me.

[–] ElChapoDeChapo@hexbear.net 11 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Smart Pipe puts you in control

[–] HexReplyBot@hexbear.net 1 points 4 weeks ago

I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

[–] came_apart_at_Kmart@hexbear.net 10 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

imagine being the human that has to constantly train and re-train the "AI" on this.

it imagine explaining to someone why you spent $500 on a robot to watch you shit from inside the toilet.

[–] LanyrdSkynrd@hexbear.net 7 points 4 weeks ago

I have a theory that the reason Darn Tough socks offers lifetime replacements is because the owner has a foot fetish and just wants to collect people's dirty socks.

Maybe this is a similar scheme

[–] Infamousblt@hexbear.net 9 points 4 weeks ago

I can just catch my poop for free and look at it why would I need this

[–] Findom_DeLuise@hexbear.net 6 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

The camera:

[–] UlyssesT@hexbear.net 3 points 3 weeks ago

Oh that takes me back. meemaw

[–] UlyssesT@hexbear.net 5 points 3 weeks ago

“We do not access an individual’s data,”

Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure.

[–] CarbonConscious@hexbear.net 5 points 3 weeks ago

I mean tbh I've been saying all along this is the kinda shit I want AI to be doing. Let it examine and compare thousands of pictures of my dookie so that the manual dookie-watchers can go out and retrain as artists.

I mean surely, this kind of thing will result in an overall improvement in our society and not just like, warehouses full of marginalized people flipping through millions of dookie pics a day while getting paid piece-work rates well below minimum wage while draining several nuclear reactors worth of power just so that The Company can bill this service as "AI" and some tech bros that made their millions on the dot Com crash and crypto scams can look at their weekly dookie-score and go, "huh, 6.8 this week. Guess I should eat some more grape nuts" (but they actually don't even). Definitely not that.

[–] hexthismess@hexbear.net 3 points 3 weeks ago

The Log Log^TM^

[–] alexandra_kollontai@hexbear.net 2 points 3 weeks ago

the system utilizes artificial intelligence

Four years ago this might have meant something. Now it just means sending the photo to ChatGPT and asking it to hallucinate a diagnosis

[–] Angel@hexbear.net 2 points 4 weeks ago

Gonna increase my beanis consumption just for this beanis

[–] Frank@hexbear.net 2 points 4 weeks ago

10,000 deaths to crunchy granola fascism i did not read the article.

[–] wtypstanaccount04@hexbear.net 2 points 3 weeks ago

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA I WAS MAKING THIS AS A JOKE YESTERDAY WHEN I WAS COMPLAINING ABOUT SMART HOME BULLSHIT

I was getting pushed on "smart home" bazinga nonsense by my company, and was joking with my coworker about how we need smart toilets that judge the quality of your shit, and here we are.

[–] a_little_red_rat@hexbear.net 2 points 3 weeks ago

I was at a work conference thing the other day and there was a bazinga-brained speaker telling us all about the wonders of AI. AI toilets were on the list of amazing technological achievements that will come to save us 😔