AI toothbrushes want your teeth and your data

The humble toothbrush is the latest everyday item to get slapped with an "AI" label.

From Oral-B and Philips to Colgate and Oclean, oral care brands are now pushing high-end toothbrushes costing upwards of $100. They promise smart algorithms and companion apps that can coach you into cleaner teeth.

Behind the pitch of better oral health, these gadgets are quietly serving a very different purpose: harvesting intimate customer behavior for big consumer brands.

Algorithms in your mouth

The trend began back at CES 2017, when French startup Kolibree debuted Ara, the first "AI toothbrush." It used low-power processors and motion sensors to track brushing habits and refine accuracy over time.

Colgate eventually licensed Kolibree's technology. Today, brands like P&G's Oral-B and Philips use similar playbooks. Oclean recently pushed things further with its X Ultra brush, adding optional Wi-Fi so brushing data uploads to the cloud in real time without even opening an app.

For personal care giants, the real prize isn't just selling hardware—it's getting behavioral data that consumers used to lie about.

P&G's R&D team noted that when asked, most people claim they brush for the recommended two minutes. Sensors in their connected brushes revealed the awkward reality: the average person actually brushes for just 47 seconds. P&G uses these real-world data points to tweak chemical formulas and product designs.

Replacing the billboard with a bathroom gadget

There is also a massive sales angle. Connected apps turn a one-off toothbrush purchase into a continuous storefront.

Apps from Colgate and Oral-B interpret brushing habits while directly feeding users product recommendations, replacement brush head reminders, and discount links. As P&G Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard previously explained, when a smart brush can tell users what they need every morning, it can practically replace traditional broadcast ads.

That continuous loop requires data collection. Privacy notices across Colgate, Philips, Oral-B, and Oclean show that user data can be shared with third parties for targeted advertising.

Philips Sonicare's app, for instance, logs not just brushing motion and pressure, but also onboarding answers about bleeding gums, plaque build-up, and potential cavities—linking clinical-level mouth profiles directly to consumer accounts.

Why it matters

We see AI toothbrushes as a masterclass in consumer surveillance disguised as wellness.

For regular consumers, the value proposition is paper-thin. A standard electric toothbrush with a built-in two-minute timer handles oral hygiene just fine. Paying a massive hardware markup to have your bathroom habits tracked, logged, and fed back into an ad machine makes little sense today.

For consumer brands, however, the playbook is brilliant. Historically, selling dental care meant spending millions on billboards and TV commercials to stay top of mind. By turning the brush into an IoT device, companies get free, objective R&D testing while planting an interactive storefront right on the customer's bathroom counter.

The catch is a growing privacy footprint where one never existed before. As toothbrushes evolve from local Bluetooth syncing to always-connected Wi-Fi devices, users are surrendering intimate health habits for minimal gain—and turning their morning routine into a corporate data stream.