LG Defends TV Data Collection After Researcher Findings — SkimNews
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- Gamers Nexus, Level1Techs, and independent security researchers earlier this week published findings showing LG TVs are logging and uploading data on their users, prompting the company to respond.
- LG released a statement claiming its "TVs do not continuously record or transmit users' conversations" and that wake-word detection is processed locally on the device.
- Gamers Nexus demonstrated an LG TV maintaining extensive logs of ambient conversations well after the AI assistant should have stopped listening — and the article notes the word "continuously" in LG's defense is doing heavy lifting as a qualifier.
- LG stated that Automatic Content Recognition (ACR), voice recognition, and interest-based advertising are "optional" and "not enabled by default," and that ACR uses audio fingerprinting via the TV's internal audio processor rather than its microphone to identify on-screen content.
- LG did not address researchers' broader concerns about how much data its TVs collect, who that data is shared with, the potential for bad actors to exploit its features, or the misleading way its privacy options are presented to users.
Why it matters: Consumers who purchased LG smart TVs face two conflicting accounts of what their devices actually capture — LG's official statement insisting local processing and opt-in features versus Gamers Nexus's demonstration of ongoing ambient conversation logging. LG's silence on data-sharing partners, exploitation risks, and privacy-option design leaves buyers without a complete picture of what their TVs transmit and to whom.
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