Why Dyson Is Betting You’ll Pay $500 for an AI-Camera Toothbrush
The Dyson CameraJet runs on 16 million lines of code and can shoot a jet of mouth rinse into a gap in your teeth.
Dyson, the British gadget brand most famous for dramatically reimagining the vacuum cleaner, has spotted a gap in a new market into which it can insert itself: tooth cleaning. The trick to this newest Dyson gizmo is in its name: CameraJet. It’s the first toothbrush that comes with a camera and a waterjet for flossing.
Don’t brush this off as just technology gone mad, though: before Dyson managed it, who would have thought millions of consumers would pay hundreds of dollars for tech-boosted hairdryers and hair straighteners?
Here’s the lowdown: the camera exists to power
Here’s the lowdown: the camera exists to power what Dyson calls a “Gap Optical Targeting” system. It sounds weird, to be sure. But apparently the device analyzes 28 live images every second to “identify and target gaps between teeth in real time” and then it shoots off a “precision jet burst of mouthrinse where it is needed.” The goal is to achieve something akin to flossing and plaque-removal from the sides of users’ teeth at the same time as a traditional toothbrushing action.
But Dyson’s got another trick: it doesn’t just brush. Instead it uses “variable sonic oscillation” to keep the bristles of the brush moving during brushing. Dyson promises that this is supposed to remove more plaque while at the same time “being gentler on gums and enamel.”
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The company says it completed six years of research and development to create the CameraJet, “challenging every aspect of conventional oral care,” along the way. Dyson even tapped the current excitement for AI tech in its press release for the new product, noting that the gizmo “runs on 16 million lines of code, and a machine learning system trained on 470,000 dental images collected during development.” Meanwhile the mouthwash is held in an “anti-gravity tank,” and the device is Wi-Fi connected so, via an app on your phone, you can see the kind of view dentists have when they’re cleaning your teeth.
All of this sounds like a panacea
All of this sounds like a panacea for tooth care, and a classic “more for more” sales pitch. And of course there is a steep price: $500.
Before you bristle at the idea of this, here are some Dyson facts to bear in mind. Last year the company revealed that it had sold more products in 2024 than ever before, topping 20 million.
Source: www.inc.com
