Earlier this week, Gamers Nexus, Level1Techs, and independent security researchers detailed some alarming findings about how LG’s TVs are logging and uploading data on its users. Now the company is pushing back against those allegations, saying that “Some recent media coverage may have contributed to misconceptions about how LG smart TVs work.”
LG released a statement in which it claims that its “TVs do not continuously record or transmit users’ conversations,” and that wake-word detection is all processed locally. However, the word “continuously” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here as Gamers Nexus demonstrated an LG TV keeping extensive logs of ambient conversations long after one would assume its AI assistant had stopped listening.
TL;DW: LG is using very weasely wording to misrepresent what they’re doing, and GN calls their bluff (with data and receipts)
So, their fix for spying is gaslighting?
They’re not trying to fix the spying, they’re trying to fix the accountability.
Always has been.
We investigated ourselves and found no wrong doing.
Yet another company going “NO WE DIDN’T”, expecting us to believe.
Gamers Nexus: We’ve documented the entire process. There’s irrefutable proof demonstrating that your TVs log conversations.
LG: Nuh-uh.
“Nuh-uh”
- PR department
I saw the video of Gamer’s Nexus… Man is like 10 times worse than I thought…
One thing I think a lot of people tend to miss when dealing with executive interviews, PR statements, and company advertising is that often times how a company defines a given term and how the actual dictionary and everyone in the world defines that term are not the same thing unless it is legally required.
Textbook examples:
Telsa, Musk, and self driving: Musk and Tesla define it as essentially what everyone else called lane assist. Then they have “full self driving” for what is supposed to be the thing everyone else would think of as self driving.
OpenAI, Sam Altman, and AGI (artificial general intelligence): No one in the AI industry has an agreed upon definition of what AGI even means. The AI labs just throw it out there for hype and funding rounds and tweak the meaning to them as they need. To most normal people I would suspect AGI means “a machine that knows its a machine and is at least as smart as the average person”.
Point being when LG says “ its TVs do not continuously record or transmit users’ conversations,” that can mean literally anything they can twist human communication methods to mean in their specific context. And it is usually the one that makes them the most money.
at least as smart as the average person.
Ooooh. So that’s why they’re eroding public education: to make AGI achievable sooner!
PR statements always make me think of the sample sentence “I never said you did that,” which can have different implications depending on which word is emphasized.
It’s time we all start speaking lojban.
“its TVs do not continuously record or transmit users’ conversations”
Because we all know voice activation isn’t a thing…
It’s not continuous if certain things have to happen for it to start…
“We own the glass” is enough for me to never buy an LG again. I own two never contacted to the internet, but Jesus that’s gross.
I suspect all the smart TVs are doing it to similar levels.
Buy a dumb Tv
BTW I see the “but a dumb tv” advice, but what are some dumb tvs in 2026?
I only see smart TVs in store, and I know the side I’d look for signage TVs but I don’t know if they have good audio with a sound bar, or good colour presentation.
Look at commercial displays, like the ones used in retail environments and digital signage.
They are built to last and the smart features are an seperate module.
“Nuh-uh” - LG
“allegations”? the thing they state to do to in their EULA, privacy agrement and whatcer other garbage no one reads? what else now? google spies on you? apple spies on you? water is wet?
Hearing about it is one thing. Seeing someone put it to the test and showing the extent of the surveillance and data harvesting is another.
The response: “we hear you!”
They’re adding a forced arbitration clause to their upcoming ToS, clearly the actions of innocent people
North Korea must be having a field day talking about what it sees as Southern chaebol capitalism hypocrisy.
Darn, they are better at mass surveillance than we are. Damn oligarchic capitalism.
I personally have no misconceptions about the intrusive data collecting, aggregating, identifying and reselling that LG is doing with their residential customers via their televisions, nor about the entitled way LG and its corporate representatives and officers have spoken about their right to gather it.
“We own the glass,” they repeat, as though that means they also own whatever is spoken beyond the glass in the same house. In reality, they own neither.
Nor am I misled by LG’s weasel words that address problems not ever specifically raised, while completely swerving around actual problems publicly demonstrated with their products.
But I will say they are laboring under a serious misconception if they think I will ever buy one from them. They can fuck ALL the way off with that shit.
LG released a statement in which it claims that its “TVs do not continuously record or transmit users’ conversations,”
But with a 100 trigger words?
They stop recording for 12 minutes a day.
They only record 44100 times a second, which is discrete and not continuous
To send all the data they collected back “home”.
The response, “Look Bryan, you should be the last one to accuse anyone of terrible things when you just casually keep a vibrating replica of smurfette’s genitals in your guest bedroom, in the bottom drawer of the left nightstand.”
Anyone know where I can get one?
