South Korean consumer-electronics company LG has denied allegations that its smart televisions record ambient conversations, listen while on standby and store recordings for later transmission.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, the company told Al Jazeera that voice data is only recorded when a user presses and holds the voice button on the TV remote or activates its \u201cHi LG\u201d wake word, after the user has activated the Far-Field voice recognition feature.<\/p>\n
\u201cOther than these instances, the TVs do not collect or record ambient conversations,\u201d LG said, adding that voice data is only processed via explicit user commands.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe audio is immediately deleted if the wake word is not recognised,\u201d the company said.<\/p>\n
The statement comes after a 135-minute investigative report released on Monday by a popular tech media outlet and YouTube channel, Gamers Nexus, with Level1Techs and independent security researchers. The investigation examined LG televisions\u2019 data collection and security systems, raising questions about how the devices handle users\u2019 private information.<\/p>\n
By analysing network traffic and software, the researchers purport to have discovered that these televisions actively track users and harvest a glut of local network data, including audio transcripts.<\/p>\n
Inside LG\u2019s controversial tracking system<\/p>\n
Gamers Nexus said its researchers were able to record audio through an LG television while it was in a state of hibernation, meaning that even if the microphone switch on the TV is turned off, other microphones exposed to the TV might not be, such as the remote.<\/p>\n
The result, Gamers Nexus says, is \u201c216,000,000 Spy TVs\u201d in the US alone.<\/p>\n
On its website, LG says it has 49 million smarts TVs in the US and 216 million globally.<\/p>\n
Recorded background noise in the room, including as far as 12 metres (40 feet) away from the TV, was also being archived, they said.<\/p>\n
Yash Vekaria, a computer science researcher at the University of California, Davis, says that because TVs stay in homes for years, often past their update support, \u201cprompt patching from LG matters\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis vulnerability can allow sniffing [of] much more critical conversations \u2026 Imagine government officials discussing national security in their hotel room [next to an] LG TV\u201d, Vekaria said.<\/p>\n
The researchers further alleged that unmatched wake-word interactions or unclear sounds could remain stored locally, transcribed and preserved on the device as plain text in case the local network is disconnected and uploaded later to LG servers.<\/p>\n
Copies can stay in temporary storage spaces, known as buffers, without the user knowing, Vekaria said.<\/p>\n
Privacy risks generally stem from poor design and selective disclosure. The more disconcerting threat lies in a compromised device, Vekaria added, which could be made to execute any command its hardware allows.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The researchers also said they found text transcripts derived from audio captured by the television, even after 10-15 seconds of silence after invoking \u201cHi LG\u201d.<\/p>\n
The claims have not been independently verified by Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt raises a question of purpose,\u201d says Vekaria, \u201ca voice command is only useful in real time, so audio queued for later upload is presumably being kept for something else, such as logging, analytics or model training. LG should explain what\u201d.<\/p>\n
Vekaria says he is not aware of any concrete evidence that ambient audio or transcripts feed into LG\u2019s advertising or profiling systems.<\/p>\n