LG denies accusations of smart TVs continuously recording its users

The company said that user privacy is a “fundamental principle” of its products.

LG

After an unsettling report that accused LG's smart TVs of spying on its users, the company has responded by saying that "some recent media coverage may have contributed to misconceptions about how LG smart TVs work." To address the claims made in a lengthy video published on Gamers Nexus, LG said that its "smart TVs do not continuously record or transmit user's conversations."

LG released a comprehensive statement a few days after the 135-minute long video from Gamers Nexus was published, which claimed the Korean electronics company's smart TVs can capture audio recordings even when the TV is asleep or unplugged from the network, as well as collecting sensitive data like IP addresses, geographic locations, names of nearby WiFi networks and devices connected to those networks even if they're not connected to the TV. The report was conducted by Gamers Nexus alongside Level1 Techs and independent cybersecurity researchers.

Following the report, LG denied these claims in statements to news outlets, but the company put out a much longer response on its website. Beyond clarifying that its smart TVs don't "continuously listen to, record, or store conversations in the home," LG added that its "speech-to-text processing begins only if a user activates a voice interaction through a supported wake-word feature or by pressing the voice button on the remote control," and that voice data wasn't stored for later upload after a TV is disconnected from the internet. LG also explained that some features like "Automatic Content Recognition," voice recognition and interest-based advertising are optional features that are turned off by default.

On top of claims of recording conversations, the Gamers Nexus' report noted that there are business-to-business benefits of collecting all of that data, but also a risk of exposure to potential exploits or security vulnerabilities. In response to this, LG said that "no connected product is ever completely immune from security vulnerabilities, which is why ongoing monitoring, testing and improvement remain important throughout the product lifecycle."