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Cybersecurity bounty hunter says Samsung TVs use AI to record audio and screenshots for ads

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Cybersecurity bounty hunter says Samsung TVs use AI to record audio and screenshots for ads

Reverse engineer and cybersecurity bounty hunter log4j recently found they were getting “weirdly targeted ads” on their Samsung TV and discovered privacy breaches. As they live-tweeted their discoveries, they found increasingly concerning code in the Tizen operating system, including detailed user telemetry from packet logging, audio categorization, screenshots, cross-device identification for ad tracking, and more, all designed to extract as much user information as possible to improve targeted ads.

log4j posted on X that they were concerned with how specific the ads on their 2025 Samsung TV were. They decided to reverse-engineer the Tizen OS on their TV to see what it was doing—they “discovered PRIVACY HORROR,” log4j states, marking the start of subsequent posts sharing more concerning findings.

i own a relatively new (2025) samsung tv.i kept getting weirdly targeted ads.i tried reversing the firmware but it was aes encrypted and no keys unless tear it apart and do uart/jtag magic.zero days it is. root shell on new samsung TVs!discovered PRIVACY HORROR. write up? https://t.co/EsxxCy1b6aOctober 21, 2026

The tester theorizes that Samsung TVs are so sluggish because they do a lot of post-processing of user data, including audio, screenshots, and AID (a cross-device tracking ID for ads), plus computer vision processing and models running on the TV. The hacker even found a region-specific convolutional neural network (an AI) that tracks user behavior, citing examples like what videos the user watches, which ads are skipped, and video progress. Log4j also found behavior for TVs without microphones, stating it will find connected devices with microphones, such as a soundbar or a connected Bluetooth device, to record audio.


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