YOUR TV IS WATCHING YOU

Artificial intelligence (AI) on televisions is not something to be blasé about ( Technology, May 5). Enthusiasm for such developments should come with caveats, particularly in light of the Listener’s April 28 story on the collection and silent sale of personal data by Facebook, Google and others (“Mining your business”).

Generally, any “artificial intelligence” doesn’t reside in a home device but in the computer servers that process data that has been sent to them over the internet. A user has no control over where their data is sent, how long it is kept and who uses it for what purposes. A user may have control over some of what is sent (pictures from a camera, voices recorded in the room), but only if they know that control is possible and know how to inhibit the particular features. And inhibiting, say, voice recognition/transmission usually means that voice commands will no longer work.

A recent article in Princeton University’s online publication “Freedom to Tinker” says that a test of a Samsung Smart TV (model not specified) revealed that “during the first minute

after power-on, the TV talks to Google Play, Double Click, Netflix, FandangoNOW, Spotify, CBS, MSNBC, NFL, Deezer, and Facebook – even though we did not sign in or create accounts with any of them”. What was sent to these sites and why? What might they do with the data, now or in the future?

Of course, the sites contacted in the US may not be the same for TVs sold in New Zealand. Samsung should not be singled out as being uniquely relaxed in not detailing the ultimate use made of our data; many “Internet of Things” devices behave in the same opaque manner.

Alistair Blennerhassett (Papamoa)