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One researcher claims that Samsung TVs without microphones can access the microphones of connected devices and stream audio to Bixby.
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Anecdotal evidence from one of the researchers. Samsung has not confirmed this, and there is no evidence of the leak.
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If this is true, expect more reverse engineering reports; Meanwhile, take the claims with skepticism and wait for Samsung’s comment.
It seems like people have been tinkering with their smart TVs a lot lately. Over the past few days, we’ve seen people using Claude Code to remove ads and add new home screens. Now, someone has gone a little further and claimed to have discovered evidence that Samsung TVs that don’t have a microphone will instead try to communicate with a device listening to you.
This claim comes entirely from anecdotal evidence from one researcher and has not been officially confirmed or acknowledged. Take everything stated here with a pinch of salt and a good level of personal judgement.
The researcher says Samsung TVs connect to devices that have microphones to listen to them
But is there a more benign reason behind this technology?
The story begins on log4j’s X account, when they noticed that their Samsung TV was showing ads that were strangely relevant to them. So, they used ChatGPT to reverse engineer the operating system, get root access, take a look at what’s going on, and claim to Discover something disturbing.
In separate Share XThey claimed that from what they saw in telemetry and service definitions, a Samsung TV could collect audio data even if it did not have a microphone. It achieves this by scanning for connected devices that have one and using their microphones instead. The voice data is then shipped to Bixby.
About four and a half hours after this post, log4j claims They have been banned from ChatGPT. A screenshot of the email shared by log4j shows that OpenAI has accused them of using the service for “internet abuse” and that they have lost their account forever.
So, what does this mean for privacy? Well, it is important to note that all of these claims come from one researcher and should be taken with a pinch of salt. This is especially true given how Samsung advertises smart home ambient alerts on its TVs as a feature, which it claims are done on the device.
For example, Tech Radar He notes that while log4j claims the TV uses event counters and sensors to scan for the sounds of babies crying and dogs barking, Samsung has advertised these features as part of Family Care and Pet Care, respectively. Additionally, it points out that while it found evidence that the connected devices’ microphones were used, there wasn’t enough to properly claim that Samsung sent that data to the home.
However, if this turns out to be true, we may see more reports in the future of people reverse-engineering their devices to see how they work. We have reached out to Samsung for comment on this matter.
