Hacker finds his Samsung TV's on-board AI listening for dogs and babies, then gets banned by OpenAI
Hacker reverses Samsung TV, finds on-board AI listening OpenAI account suspended
A Reddit user in r/antiai reports reverse engineering his own Samsung TV and discovering an on-board AI that listens for the sounds of dogs and babies. When he used ChatGPT to help with the teardown, OpenAI suspended his account. Commenters debate whether researching your own device counts as hacking, and why a TV would care about barking and crying in the first place.
Targeted advertising. You'll throw lots of money at both of them.
- fn-mote
As far as I can tell, there is no write up. This is a reddit post with screenshots of a Twitter/X post by @log4j. Even the Twitter post doesn’t seem informative, but Reddit isn’t a source for the information by any means.
The original link was on HN two days ago with no traction.
- jck86
To what extend do these "smart" products state how, when and what data they are collecting and selling?
Isn't it high time for legislation that at least makes it clear on the box what kind of sensors and integrations it has and how bad the product is privacy wise?
Also, shouldn't corporate spying disguised as automated content recognition and classification be limited or outright be banned?
And all this connected garbage should by law be able to function with the cord cut and without registration, and if an update negatively changes the advertised product characteristics the customer must be allowed to return it for full paid price even if it is 10 years old. Force the manufactures to make statements on the "box" about the features, the support duration and level, and the privacy characteristics.
Why don't politicians care about this?
- MisterMunchkin
Remember guys, if they are reading it for wrongthink, they are reading it for industrial espionage.
Anthropic and openAI just announced they’re spinning out competitors to their biggest customers… right after ingesting all of their IP and contracts. Do the math.
(Or don’t, because they’ve been caught stealing math research)
- someonehere
Just a reminder. You can buy a kiosk TV from major TV manufacturers. You just have to look a little. Kiosk TVs are intended for lobby signage or conference rooms. You pay a little more but the garbage UI and always on piece is gone. You get 4 HDMI with them too (from what I've used).
- tintor
This looks very bad on OpenAI.
What is next? Power and water company suspending your account if your home and car are not streaming enough telemetry.
I am glad that open models are closing on frontier.
- 3abiton
This is again will be very funny race to watch. Right now you can fairly do lots of reverse enginnering or "hacking" with off the shelf Chinese models, and they are very capable (GLM3 for example) which can be run locally if you stomach the hardware. Tools like rea are also becoming more popular. If openai continues to be pedantic, they will lose the technical base given how close is the gap getting.
- luma
Dog bark and baby crying detection are advertised features for SmartThings integrations. Door bell and door knocking are also included, this is surfaced directly if you hook the TV or sound bar into SmartThings.
- ada-h00k
If OpenAI really banned him for that reason, that would be pretty stupid. If you can no longer use an LLM for reverse engineering without worrying about your account, that drastically reduces its value.