- Users say they have observed LG gaming monitors automatically installing unwanted software on PCs
- LG’s terms of service warn that conversations may be “captured and processed” on TVs with the latest version of webOS
- The terms say you must now warn guests that they may be recorded “in accordance with applicable wiretapping…laws”
How smart should a smart TV be? According to LG’s latest TV terms and conditions, the answer is “not quite smart enough to comply with wiretapping laws” because it is now your liability if LG captures a guest’s voice in your house through its AI voice services. Although the situation with LG monitors seems to be even more dramatic.
As Gamers Nexus reports, some LG monitors appear to install adware on Windows PCs without asking for permission: In addition to LG Monitor App Installer, they also install McAfee Scam Detector.
LG’s own app requires full access to all system resources, potentially including all your online activity, logins, hardware, location and more – while McAfee has a long history of being installed on devices as ‘bloatware’, and people don’t react well to suddenly finding it on their PC.
There may be a completely innocent explanation for all of this, but when big tech companies keep getting caught doing bad things because they thought they could get away with it, it’s no wonder people assume the worst.
The bit that causes consternation regarding smart TVs is Section 6(d) of the new LG Electronics Terms of Service, titled Voice Recognition and Privacy Compliance.
As Notebookcheck’s Hannes Brecher notes, the section states that it is your responsibility “to obtain all necessary consents from any third parties whose voices may be captured by the product, and to notify household members and guests that their voices may be captured and processed, in accordance with applicable wiretapping, eavesdropping, and privacy laws.”
There are three ways around it. First, you can turn off all microphone-based features. Some people won’t mind, but they can be useful – especially asking it for settings you don’t know how to find.
Second, you can avoid installing the latest software—but that means you won’t get any security updates, which is important (to protect your privacy, ironically, among other things).
Or you can disable your TV’s connection to the internet so it can’t send information back, but that obviously makes it less useful and will also disable voice control anyway.
I think the terms and conditions are an attempt at corporate ass-covering rather than anything sinister: the previous paragraph specifically talks about when “a product with voice recognition functionality is used” and it’s possible that “family members, guests, children and bystanders” could be overheard; If you choose to enable AI-based voice features, voices will of course be captured and processed for these features to work.
At the same time, it seems broad enough to let LG use people’s voices as AI input, rather than just accidental recording. And in the context of what LG is doing with PC monitors (not to mention the AI training’s much, ahem, relaxed (relating to consent and copyright), it’s a concern – and people online increasingly have zero tolerance for anything like that, as the responses on Reddit and Gamers Nexus’ original YouTube video have shown.
We’ve reached out to LG for comment on these claims and will update the story when we hear back.
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