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.
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.