It’s a literal crap-shoot.
A Texas startup named Throne is making waves in scatological circles after devising a camera that attaches to your toilet and photographs your poop.
“Throne uses a downward facing camera that securely captures video during each bathroom visit,” the Austin-based tech firm writes while describing the crappy camera, simply dubbed Throne, on their site.
They’re not filming bowel movements for s–ts and giggles, however. This seemingly voyeuristic tech is used to lift the lid on the user’s gut health.
The downward-facing device simply clips onto the toilet rim and snaps videos of your stool. Afterward, doctor-trained artificial intelligence analyzes the stool and provides insight into the user’s daily “digestive and hydration status.”
This doody data, along with tailored health recs, is then made available via an accompanying Smartphone application.
Throne is specifically searching for health markers in excrement as well as “nuances” in the urine to determine the pooper’s level of hydration, TechCrunch reported.
On a larger scale, “monitoring bowel movements can provide valuable insights into digestive health and nutrient absorption, as well as serve as an early warning sign for various conditions like gastrointestinal bleeding,” the site describes.
“It’s a cost-effective, non-invasive way to keep tabs on overall health,” they add. “And for individuals with chronic gastrointestinal diseases, it’s an essential part of ongoing management.”
Of course, these fecal photo-ops do raise some privacy concerns — as myriad Airbnb horror stories have proven, there are few things more violating than a cam in the bathroom, let alone the john.
However, Throne assures prospective users on the site that they understand that this health info is “incredibly personal.”
To protect users’ privacy, the digital doo-cumenter only records the “contents of your toilet bowl,” per the site
“Any other data is irrelevant to our mission and could compromise our ability to provide accurate health insights,” Throne declares. “We use image recognition technology to automatically delete any non-relevant images. This ensures that only toilet-related data is retained.”
Users can also request complete access to the data they collected while the company will delete any info upon demand (no need to worry that it’s being hacked and sent to the fecal fetish industry).
Best of all, all the data is “anonymized,” meaning the data can’t be traced back to the original user.
The toilet cam sets users back $499, though the company is selling it for $299 for those who want to get in early.
