- Read the press release from Texas Attorney General regarding the smart TV lawsuits here.
In December 2025, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a series of lawsuits against five global television (TV) manufacturing companies for spying on people.
His core allegation is, “These companies have been unlawfully collecting personal data through Automated Content Recognition (“ACR”) technology.”
Companies involved in these lawsuits: Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense, and TCL (Technology Group Corporation).
Allegations of misusing user data: He also alleged that these companies “sell that consumer information to target ads across platforms for a profit,” arguing that users’ privacy and sensitive information are allegedly compromised and at risk.
Allegations of the Chinese government’s involvement: He further alleged that some of the companies mentioned in the lawsuit are connected to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Just Hisense and TCL are based in China. Meanwhile, Sony is a Japanese company, whereas both Samsung and LG are based in South Korea.
What is ACR tech? ACR refers to Automated Content Recognition (“ACR”) technology. “ACR periodically captures frames (and/or audio), builds a fingerprint of the content, and then shares it with an ACR server for matching it against a database of known content (e.g., movies, ads, live feed),” reads the explanation in 2024’s research paper titled “Watching TV with the Second-Party: A First Look at Automatic Content Recognition Tracking in Smart TVs.” The paper further states:
- Shazam-like auto detection of content: “When the fingerprint matches, the ACR server can determine exactly what piece of content is being watched on the smart TV.” This is quite similar to how the song-detection Shazam app works. Explore more about how Shazam works here.
- User profiling to serve personalised ads: “This enables smart TV platforms like Samsung and LG to profile users into audience segments, which are then used to target personalised ads.”
- Collected user data may not be anonymous: “Fingerprints in ACR are essentially a hash of the content, which can be matched server-side to identify the content. However, the fact that a hash of content rather than raw content is sent to ACR servers does not necessarily make the data ‘anonymous.’ Moreover, the viewing habits of a user are potentially identifying.”
Read the full research paper on ResearchGate here: [ PDF ]
“ACR captures everything on your screen, not just TV shows, but also YouTube videos, security or doorbell camera streams, and video or photos you send via Apple AirPlay or Google Cast, and from other devices connected to your TV by HDMI, including personal laptops, video game consoles, and Blu-ray players,” reads the Texas AG’s lawsuit against Sony.
What are the Texas Attorney General’s allegations against Sony?
- ACR tracing since 2013: Sony began incorporating ACR…
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