What would you say if your smart TV uses artificial intelligence to analyze your emotions and beliefs, put you into certain groups, to display targeted ads to you?
Ads may be based on your viewing habits, what you watch, when you watch, what you search for and so on.
What sounds like something straight out of Minority Report is actually going to be integrated into certain LG TVs. The report comes from Stream TV Insider.
According to the report, LG is teaming up with Zenapse, a “focuses on artificial intelligence (AI) and emotional intelligence to enhance marketing and customer experience (CX) optimization”.
The goal of the cooperation is to deliver ads that are more targeted by segmenting the audience with the help of AI and data. LG is integrating Zenapse’s technology into its Large Emotion Model (LEM) into its ad stack.
LEMs are created to understand “emotional and psychological drivers”. In this context, their purpose is to determine what viewers like and what resonates with them.
It is important to note that the technology analyzes the emotions of viewers indirectly, by analyzing the content that gets watched and consumption patterns.
So, if a viewer watches romantic comedies a lot, they might be more receptive to ads that play with emotions linked to romantic comedies.
But the platform goes beyond that. Ars Technica notes that viewers are categorized into very specific types, such as “social connectors”, “emotionally engaged planners”, or “goal-driven achievers”.
Companies that pay LG to display ads to viewers may tap into the data to show ads to highly specific groups of users only.
LG has not provided much details besides that. Can you turn the feature off? That is unclear. What you can do, however, is skip the connecting of the TV to the Internet. Without Internet, the TV won’t be able to do much.
Other options include using solutions such as AdGuard or DNS-based filters to weed out most of the advertisement before it lands on the TV.
What is your take on this? Are your TVs connected to the Internet? Feel free to leave a comment down below.
Yes our TV is connected to the internet. It is setup so that we can stream Disney and Netflix and use Plex to watch local media. That last part is quite irritating as Plex will not function without an internet connection even though we use it “only” for viewing local media.
Our main reason for owning a ‘smart’ tv is it’s ability to upscale 720p content to 4k.
We have an older TV with no mic or camera though and I have the knowhow to disconnect those things if/when we are forced to replace our TV and will do so.
I’d like to add that here in Ca manufacturers are required by law to provide the tools for users to access and alter the software settings and that they do so. However, the tools provided are intentionally extremely difficult to use and will brick the TV upon the slightest error.
I have to admit that I’m using a Fire TV Stick currently with some sideloaded apps and Adguard protection. Did not connect our Sony TV to the Internet, no reason for doing so. Not super happy with Fire TV, but have yet to find a streaming stick or box that works better for our use cases.
As I recommended you before, ONN Google TV is as flexible as Fire TV with few apps can be sideloaded, but choice of working sideloaded apps is minimal. What’s new since then, that one of my ONN devices bricked after 5 months. So ONN devices easy to use, but reliability is poor from my anecdotal evidence.
I don’t watch TV. I terminated my subscription back in 2012 because the constant interruptions to programmes to suddenly display ads without any warning had become intolerable and I was no longer prepared to put up with it.
Nowadays I just use it to watch DVDs.
Funny thing is, I do not watch TV either, but still have to pay about €20 per month 🙁
I’ve just connected the TV Samsung to the Internet, allowing us to stream shows from our Samsung smartphones.
I hadn’t realized/searched this possibility before, not having had any use for it since I use a DVD recorder (with which I can bypass or delete ads !).
TV has (fortunately) no camera!