Some smart TVs won’t take no for an answer.
When these same machines don’t get what they’re looking for, they may implement work-arounds in order to pry into a user’s private life.
‘… a company that truly listens to its customers.’
One researcher decided to reverse-engineer a Samsung smart TV and allegedly found numerous disturbing features buried in its programming.
Some of the most damning allegations include facial recognition code that placed “bounded boxes” around faces, as seen when using a smartphone, for example.
The researcher — going by Log4j — also revealed what he deemed to be sinister listening habits of the televisions.
While many Samsung smart TVs have a built-in microphone, if it doesn’t, “it will look for connected devices with one, such as a soundbar or a connected bluetooth device,” the researcher claimed.
Moreover, the audio is allegedly broken down into categories before it is reported to its masters. Code purportedly showed “dog-barking” and “baby-crying” events, with the code even noting the TV’s camera.
“Finally found a company that truly listens to its customers,” the researcher joked.
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Giulia Marchi/Bloomberg/Getty Images
The self-described “reverse engineer” said he uncovered dozens of pages of functions that he hoped to discuss, all by simply running his personal TV’s code through an AI agent.
For his Samsung, the researcher said it loads a “region specific convolutional neural network” that tracks usage in apps on the TV. This includes what type of YouTube videos a user watches, which ads are skipped, and video retention time.
“So glad they’re interested in me,” he wrote.
Another researcher from the Bitcoin world, Marty Bent, claimed that Samsung TVs also have an “always-on hot mic functionality” and “automatic content recognition.”
Bent likened the purchase of a new TV to signing up for an agreement with 400 of the company’s partners.
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The microphones on Samsung TVs have already become a rather public and contentious point for users, and Samsung even provides instructions for how to manually turn the microphone off for many of its TVs.
While some models purport to not have microphones at all and do not have the switch, internal settings show microphone access. Those consumers can still set up voice recognition with Samsung’s Bixby, a virtual assistant developed by the company. This can be accomplished with a microphone through a remote or other remote devices.
Samsung did not immediately reply to a request for comment about these allegedly hidden features and has not provided public comment on them, either.
As this is an ongoing story, information will be updated as it is received.
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Samsung, Smart tv, Facial recognition, Tech
