LG Says Its TVs Don't Record You. Researchers Found Logs.

The company says its content-recognition and voice features are optional, off by default, and that wake-word detection stays on the set.

LG's smart televisions don't continuously record or transmit what's said in the room, the company said in a statement answering researchers' findings. The Verge published the denial on September 12, 2026. The outlet flagged how much work the word “continuously” is doing in it. Wake-word detection runs on the television itself, LG said.

If you own one of these sets, the question isn't whether there's a microphone in it. It's what the television keeps after the assistant stops listening. And whether the three features LG calls optional are actually switched off on the unit already sitting in your living room.

Earlier in the week, the hardware channels Gamers Nexus and Level1Techs laid out what they say LG televisions log and upload. Independent security researchers made similar findings, The Verge reported. Gamers Nexus demonstrated a set holding extensive logs of ambient conversation, the outlet reported. Those logs ran well past the point where you'd assume the assistant had quit listening.

LG's framing of the coverage was its first move.

“Some recent media coverage may have contributed to misconceptions about how LG smart TVs work,” the company said. Three features are optional and don't arrive switched on, it said: automatic content recognition, voice recognition, and interest-based advertising.

On content recognition, the wording is careful. LG said the feature uses audio fingerprinting through the television's internal audio processor, not a speaker, to identify what's playing. It collects no screenshots, screen recordings, video recordings or audio recordings from the set, the company said.

That's a denial of a list of capture methods. It isn't an account of what a fingerprint of your room's audio tells the company about what you watch. It doesn't say how often one gets taken, either.

The Verge wrote that the statement left the bigger questions alone: how much data the sets collect overall, who that data is shared with, and what an attacker could do with the same features. The outlet also said the statement skipped how those privacy choices are put in front of owners in the first place.

What LG's answer amounts to is a list. Automatic content recognition, voice recognition, interest-based advertising — by the company's own account, all three can be off. Finding out which ones are on is a job for whoever's holding the remote.

Source: theverge.com, retrieved September 13, 2026.