LG says it'll let people delete the Copilot icon. But TV chatbots aren't going away.
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LG TVs’ unremovable Copilot shortcut is the least of smart TVs’ AI problems
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
Consider how search engines have reduced air travel to an excruciating exercise in exploitation and degradation. We click the lowest price, then complain when we're forced to abase ourselves before the great God "shareholder value" for hours at a time.
That corporate neofeudalism forces billions to submit while their big shiny bread and circuses data rapes them is so perfectly Orwellian that reads like fiction. Increasingly, end stage capitalism appears to have condensed mid-20th century dystopian novels into a playbook.
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Roku knows what your'e watching through an HDMI port other than the one it is plugged into.
Ars did an article last week about dumb TV's.
ACR.
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https://www.google.com/search?q=con...d=chrome&ie=UTF-8&sei=0x9HaaLtELuvqtsPr5SksAU
Ars did an article last week about dumb TV's.
ACR.
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https://www.google.com/search?q=con...d=chrome&ie=UTF-8&sei=0x9HaaLtELuvqtsPr5SksAU
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If one software tweak can extract 79¢ of shareholder value from a billion people… Well, you can do basic arithmetic as well as I can. Particularly in the U.S., which permits its top legislature to run itself as a corporate whorehouse, it's surprising EULAs don't yet entitle entertainment to extract our organs as we watch the endless dream of other people's fascinating lives. After all, it's not like anyone needs two kidneys and a whole liver to sit on the couch and dream of owning more stuff.
The predator parasite class ensures that no matter how cynical we are today, tomorrow will prove us naive.
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Google TV has both features already youtube has ai subs and dubbing and the screensaver has a AI gen random image mode that is also used on chrome os since the screensaver mode is the same on both os platforms. LG is trying to catch up with google and amazon by adding copilot.
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https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/is-your-tv-spying-on-you-how-to-check
even roku boxes use it to collect data and basically no device it safe.
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That's not quite true. There's a reason most - including Ars - recommend Apple TV and a completely offline television as the combination of choice.
Apple TV has no ACR, no ads, and what limited tracking it does have is - claimed to be, anyway - anonymised (to Apple, if you use streaming apps, they will track you - but only when using their app - the only way to avoid that is not to stream from them.)
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SubWoofer2
Ars Tribunus Militum
Fifteen years ago I recall using a silly mouse to fiddle about, back-and-forthing and press ENTER to select letters to make words on the "Smart" TV screen, meantime as the ability to manoeuvre between apps or onto internet was frustrating random. The pessary-shaped mouse was shoved into a dark place - a drawer - and not used again.
What's weird is that it seems that since then, the user interface has become more efficient for an overall even less user-friendly result.
What's weird is that it seems that since then, the user interface has become more efficient for an overall even less user-friendly result.
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Same reason your smartphone came with a bunch of preloaded crap.
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I've had a bug up my ass about ACR for years now (regarding that Texas lawsuit), and it's not just, you know, someone can see that I'm playing such-and-such a video game or watching an alternatively-sourced video file with VLC. I work with information that cannot be viewed by non-Americans or be communicated over non-American networks. It's also always confidential, but it's the export violations that'll ruin your life.
I wonder how many people out there are using TVs or
"smart monitors" as work monitors that have never heard of ACR, much less bothered to go in and disable it...and that's assuming the entirely software switch actually does anything. It doesn't matter, really. The fact that the TV has the ability to take screenshots and send them to servers in other countries means that you absolutely should never look at anything even remotely sensetive on a TV.Even if I were never going to connect that TV to the internet, you could never know for sure that the data wasn't stored somewhere, waiting for someone to connect the TV to the internet. You could never sell or give away the screen. You'd have to open it up, find the storage, and put a drill bit through the NVM chips. And I imagine that most people have no idea, including the majority of people who have been entrusted with export-controlled information. I've endured a fair few compliance tranings and never once do I remember being told "Never, ever plug your work laptop into a smart TV".
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So WebOS with AI?
Glad I bought Highsense. I can just turn off Google TV and use it as a dumb TV on my Apple TV if I want.
Glad I bought Highsense. I can just turn off Google TV and use it as a dumb TV on my Apple TV if I want.
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I did not agree to the privacy policy on my TV. So it promptly disabled access to all of its native apps. Fuck it. I have an AppleTV with all the same apps, no ads, and a more responsive interface. My TV will never see an updated firmware, and I don't give a shit.
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Fun fact: I actually bought a new Sony TV this year and it definitely does not do this.
I know this because I also bought my mother the same TV. Hers is online. Mine is not, and never has been. Mine even has another online Sony product—a PlayStation—plugged in to one of the HDMI ports (as well as an Apple TV and a Raspberry Pi). Her TV gets updates. Mine does not.
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I get what you are saying but I question if he was really on the right track. The whole premise of his post was that if the tv is disconnected from the internet the tv is still going to get around it by accepting network traffic over HDMI. That is simply not true. HEC was never implemented in consumer products, though the HDMI pins that are designated for it still get used for Audio Return Channel.
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I'm still not getting what people are failing to understand by my post. I specifically said he was factually incorrect. But that he was on the right track by suggesting that it is possible the HDMI connection somehow WAS in the loop of the data harvesting path.
Which as noted by others ITT it is entirely possible to harvest viewing data from HDMI. It is simply not possible to send such information OUT through HDMI. At least at the moment.
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As a former teenage libertarian, I think it’s at least 9 out of every 10 who really don’t realize that what they believe is a deep understanding of economics is like fancying yourself a physicist after reading a few “assume a perfectly uniform spherical cow in a vacuum” introductory problems. This is really easy to do in the U.S. where we talk about free markets in this quasi-religious manner which has little resemblance to many key markets.
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Maybe there is a home market for Apple's VR headset. At some point it might be the only way to have a 55" or larger monitor without enduring AI crap and ads.
Also, whatever happened to craplets, those app stubs that used to get installed on every new PC? Do Windows users still have to delete them?
Also, whatever happened to craplets, those app stubs that used to get installed on every new PC? Do Windows users still have to delete them?
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BobbyBobberson
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Do people not know you don't have to plug in an ethernet cable or join a wifi network on your TV?
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This is basically an ad for Microsoft services. The app doesn't matter. It serves no benefit. Even if it is bloated, slow and painful to use so long as Microsoft let you know copilot is a thing that's good enough for them it seems. Even if it creates a negative brand image. They don't care. Microsoft is the software factory as Bill Gates called it. A.k.a just create as much stuff as quickly as possible with little consideration of the user experience, in the hope some of it will stick.
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I don't disagree with you about ACR, though in this instance I do think the whole concept you're focusing on is a bit flawed. If the set is disconnected it isn't going to be phoning home to the manufacturer mothership over HDMI cables or via any other method.
All I did was point out to the other guy that his bullshit post was bullshit. Because it's bullshit. You, OTOH, made a reasonable post and I tried to respond in kind, complete with explanation of my thought process.
And just to be clear, I am not one of the people who has downvoted your post.
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Precisely this, and one of the first things I learned in Econ 101. Ironically, a functioning free market depends precisely on regulations that ensure consumers can access the necessary information about their products. You cannot vote with your wallet effectively if you don't know what you are voting for. Of course, this and other factors only prove that the concept of a pure free market is a mirage to begin with, but I digress.
Anyway, these corporations are absolutely desperate to make ubiquitous "AI" a thing, regardless of whether or not the average person needs it or could make effective use of it (spoiler: they don't). I mean, who the hell is actually going to go out of their way to use Copilot on their TV instead of just opening ChatGPT on the smartphone sitting right on the are of their sofa? Surreptitiously sticking it into every device possible is the only way to pump up those numbers. The enshittification will continue until
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"If the set is disconnected it isn't going to be phoning home to the manufacturer"
And I was saying don't count on that being the case if you ever put your home wifi password into the television.
Even if you somehow turned off wifi connectivity after the fact these companies are notorious for turning things back on through updates.
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For someone who currently has 8 fairly high end televisions I don't actually watch any traditional tv at all. Ads are not welcome in my home and I ditched DirecTV something like 15 years ago.
We do have several streaming services but I don't watch most of them. The wife spends her time on Netflix and Disney+. I watch some Apple TV+, Curiosity Stream, and the occasional educational piece on Youtube.
The vast majority of my watch time comes either from movies or some Prestige TV show. I have an enormous library to choose from so I'm rarely starved for content.
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carbon60Unit
Ars Centurion
In this configuration, can you play music without the TV on? Right now I have an older Mac connected to the TV via HDMI, but I'm driving a very nice old set of Bose speakers with woofer from the laptop's headphone output. It's easy to play music without the TV on. Is AppleTV useful for music playback, or will I always need something else?
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I totally agree. I have two rules about tv's:
1. Never buy a tv for what it may do tomorrow. Only buy one for what it already does today.
2. Never connect a television to the internet.
I've only ever broken rule #2 one time, but it was for a good cause.
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Just don't connect your tv to the internet. Simple. I have an LG tv that has never connected to the internet and it's been perfect. (I use an apple tv box for streaming). There's really no need to connect these tvs anyway. No updates, no ads, no annoyances. Just an appliance that works full stop.
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Alexa's great at farting though. Right now you can even get a Santa Claus fart out of her.
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His nonsense claim was that the TV would somehow connect to the internet through your Apple TV's wifi connection through the "ethernet" in HDMI.
That's a completely separate bit of madness from the TV taking screen captures of the content that it's displaying.
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https://www.digitalcitizen.life/how-to-use-hdmi-cable-with-ethernet/
early smart tv's used to have this enabled by default when not every device had wireless and you could just connect one box online and the HDMI cable would share the network connection so if you just had a roku online your tv would use it's internet to get online. it's not as active but the HDMI soec requires every port still allow this feature
it;s sold as part of every microsoft 365 , visual studio, and github sale microsft has many editons of copilot including the xbox gaming copilot there all web apps that open chromeless edge windows .365 copilot is vasically like the old ms works hub but for ms office apps.
they installed a web link to the Bing copilot site unless you run the web browser on webos 24/7 it uses nothing and like the windows 11 one on non ai co processor pc's it runs entirely on a microsoft azure server running microsoft web sphere linux and windows server.
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I might suggest a Roku Streaming Stick or similar. It works and it is manufacturer agnostic so it doesn't push content from a particular vendor.
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Makes me glad the windows phone failed. Your car is the obvious next battlefront.
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I can't imagine any situation where I would feel the need to use Copilot on my TV.
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Sounds like you need two specific compatible devices and a special cable to enable it.
So it's not some system lurking as a gotcha, the moment you connect regular HDMI to your TV.
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KoshcheiTheDeathless
Ars Praetorian
For the price and in the number that these devices sell, I'm calling bullshit on the notion that they're subsidized -- they've long since achieved economies of scale.
This is a predatory attempt from the TV manufacturer to diversify their income streams by selling data they're stealing from you to third party partners who are paying them for it. If they can get you paying them a monthly fee as well, then they're effectively selling the same device three times, twice in perpetuity.
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