LG defends smart-TV features amid audio surveillance allegations

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.

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 “Hi LG” wake word, after the user has activated the Far-Field voice recognition feature.

“Other than these instances, the TVs do not collect or record ambient conversations,” LG said, adding that voice data is only processed via explicit user commands.

“The audio is immediately deleted if the wake word is not recognised,” the company said.

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’ data collection and security systems, raising questions about how the devices handle users’ private information.

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.

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.

The result, Gamers Nexus says, is “216,000,000 Spy TVs” in the US alone.