Is your LG TV spying on you? The company finally responds

Your TV is probably one of the last gadgets in your home you expect to worry about from a privacy standpoint. You turn it on, spend 20 minutes deciding what to watch, give up and rewatch something familiar, and eventually switch it off. At least, that’s how most of us think about it. But smart TVs are effectively giant connected computers in our living rooms, which means they can collect far more information than the old dumb TVs they replaced.

That issue has been thrust back into the spotlight after a recent Gamers Nexus YouTube video raised several privacy concerns around smart TVs, with LG TVs receiving particular attention. Highlighted issues included Automatic Content Recognition (ACR), voice features, data collection, and potential security vulnerabilities.

LG has now responded to those claims, strongly disputing the idea that its TVs are sitting in your living room continuously recording what you say. The company maintains that voice processing only kicks in after you deliberately start an interaction, either by saying a supported wake word or pressing the voice or AI button on the remote. Wake-word detection itself happens locally on the TV. So, if you’re sitting on the couch talking to someone about dinner and don’t say the relevant wake word, that conversation shouldn’t be converted into text, stored, or sent elsewhere.

Even after voice recognition is activated, the listening window is relatively short. A session automatically ends after about 10 seconds if the TV doesn’t detect speech. If you’re talking, it ends once the system determines you’ve finished, with the entire session limited to roughly 18 seconds. The response also addresses what happens when your TV is offline: voice data supposedly isn’t saved in the background and uploaded once the internet connection returns. That’s an important distinction, but voice recognition is only one part of the privacy discussion.

ACR is arguably the more interesting one because its entire purpose is figuring out what you’re watching. LG explains that its implementation uses audio fingerprinting through the TV’s internal audio processor to recognize content, rather than taking screenshots, recording the screen, capturing video, or storing audio recordings. Think of it as identifying a song rather than recording your entire listening session. The system looks for a recognizable fingerprint that tells it what’s playing.

If enabled, however, ACR-generated information can be used for things like audience segmentation and viewing-trend analysis. So, your TV doesn’t necessarily need to save a copy of what’s on the screen to learn something about your viewing habits. For example, if you watch football every Sunday, regularly tune into cooking shows, or spent the past month bingeing crime dramas, those viewing patterns can still be valuable information. According to the response, ACR, voice recognition, and interest-based advertising aren’t switched on by default and require the relevant agreements or consent. Interest-based and cross-device advertising also require separate consent.

LG also clarified that features like device discovery, nearby Wi-Fi processing, and ACR work separately and serve different purposes. You can manage these optional features through your TV’s settings. While LG’s response clears up some concerns about its TVs continuously recording conversations, it doesn’t fully settle the broader privacy debate around smart TVs.

There’s a big difference between a television secretly recording your conversations and a television collecting information about how you use it. LG explicitly denies the former. The latter, however, is increasingly part of how modern connected TVs operate, as long as you’ve agreed to the relevant features.

And that’s where I think the bigger problem lies. Most people don’t buy a TV expecting to study privacy agreements. You’re probably thinking about screen size, what type of screen you want, how many HDMI 2.1 ports it has, or whether Netflix loads quickly. When a setup screen throws several agreements at you, it’s incredibly easy to keep hitting “Agree” because you just want to start watching your new TV. That’s why pointing to user consent alone doesn’t fully settle the issue. There’s a difference between technically agreeing to a feature and actually understanding what information it can collect and how it might be used.

LG deserves credit for addressing the concerns in detail, and its response clears up some of the more alarming claims around continuous recording. But it also shows just how complicated privacy on a modern TV has become. If explaining what your television does with your data requires a lengthy statement distinguishing voice recognition, ACR, device discovery, nearby Wi-Fi processing, and advertising agreements, then the problem may not be whether users clicked “Agree.” It’s whether they had any realistic idea what they were agreeing to in the first place.

So no, your LG TV isn’t necessarily sitting in the corner secretly recording everything you say; that’s reassuring. But a TV shouldn’t have to be secretly recording you before you’re allowed to question just how much it knows about you.