Even with LG’s concession, it may become more difficult to avoid chatbots on TVs.
LG says it will let people delete the Copilot icon from their TVs soon, but it still has plans to weave the service throughout webOS. The Copilot web app rollout seems to have been a taste of LG’s bigger plans to add Copilot to some of its 2025 OLED TVs. In a January announcement, LG said Copilot will help users find stuff to watch by “allowing users to efficiently find and organize complex information using contextual cues.” LG also said Copilot would “proactively” identify potential user problems and offer “timely, effective solutions.”
Some TVs from LG’s biggest rival, Samsung, have included Copilot since August. Owners of supporting 2025 TVs can speak to Copilot using their remote’s microphone. They can also access Copilot via the Tizen OS homescreen’s Apps tab or through the TVs’ Click to Search feature, which lets users press a dedicated remote button to search for content while watching live TV or Samsung TV Plus. Users can also ask the TV to make AI-generated wallpapers or provide real-time subtitle translations.
We need a custom replacement ROMs like Lineage or Graphene for smart TVs.
They’ve got a USB interface and most run some flavor of Linux. Maybe someone smarter than me can explain what the difficulty is, because it seems simple enough to my stupid ass.
I am still using a 2011 TV, but when it goes out it seems I’ll have to switch to a big PC monitor to dodge all that bullshit.
I don’t want a smart TV. I want a stupid screen, with just enough color settings to properly calibrate it. That’s it.
The thing with smart TVs is that you don’t need to connect them to your network to use them.
LG, unfortunately, still make the best OLED displays at the moment, and Samsung are arguably even worse when it comes to not respecting their customers.
Our C2 65in is hooked up to an Apple TV for all of our media streaming needs.
Apple TV is honestly fantastic. The only issue is, so many streaming devices don’t support 120 Hz so you can’t have 120 Hz Steam Link for example, you usually need to use the built-in OS Steam Link to stream games at 120 Hz.
I hope this is something that will change in the future.
I get where you’re coming from, and in certain situations where you can’t otherwise get around it, you can configure your home network to not allow the Smart TV to phone home with telemetry or to accept any inbound external network traffic, so it can only access local network data such as your PC for Steam link.
I’m not confident enough to configure my home network that well (yet), hence I just opt to have the TV air gapped instead
Smart tv’s are awful, doubly so since you cant get “dumb” tv’s anymore. I just dont give my tv wifi access and that seems to pretty much mitigate all the bullshit.
I lament the day online access and accounts become a requirement.
Same. It was bad when gaming consoles did it and I see no reason why corps wouldnt do it
Consider seeing the youth of today don’t consume their media for atvs primarily anymore, it’s unlikely they will force that.
I Dont trust these TVs not to make peer to peer connections with others until it hops onto one with a active connection.
If I get a new TV, its getting opened and the wifi antennas and microphones are getting desoldered.
All I want is a DisplayPort and maybe some os with freedom of Linux why is that too much to ask for. The fact I can’t have vrr with my $600 GPU is absolute bullshit
Get a Raspberry Pi? Or maybe a SBC with a display port option.
Yeah I have a 3b and 4b
Next time I get a new TV, that sucker is getting opened and the wifi antennas and microphones desoldered.
On Roku branded TVs, it sounds like that just means you can’t use it for anything
If it doesn’t connect, it won’t let you switch inputs or anything until you connect your account
The problem is, you can never trust companies whose products can update over the air. (like “smart TVs”). The company can promise all kinds of things they won’t do and then sneak something awful into a future update. I will spend a little more on “non-smart / no WiFi” TVs in the future.
How exactly?
They don’t make no Wifi TVs. You can choose to not give it your Wifi Password.
And please don’t say digital signage. That costs 10x what a TV does and the picture is significantly worse.
Here’s a 32" one on Amazon. Found it in just a few seconds.
A 32" TV is not what most people are looking for. In fact I don’t know anyone with a main TV that small these days. The problem is that 40"+ dumb TVs are hard to find. I’m not saying they don’t exist, but very few manufacturers are making them, and the few that are have garbage screens in them.
Specs seem bad. Only 720p from the looks of it no mention of latency which makes it questionable for gamers. Better off getting a gaming monitor at that point over it.
I don’t think this is even worth buying and seems the type of junk TV that would be sold on black Friday as a deal.
Just don’t connect the TV to wifi?
The problem is, the TV won’t let you. The Visio TV won’t let you do anything with it at all until you set up your WiFi connection first. So you can’t even use it as a dumb monitor.
And if you disable WiFi later, the TV will nag you to turn it back on every time the TV starts up. I’m sure this design is intentional.
Could you connect it to wifi, but then block the tv on your router from Internet access?
Realtime subtitles is a value ad for the user. That’s totally fine.
Copilot scanning my activity and recommending me shows serves the company, get that off of TVs.
I’ll always use a plugin streamer.
This crap is why my LG TV lost its internet privileges last year and built a htpc to do all my media needs.
I can’t stand the algorithms of video media. I wish they all had organic options.
I’ve never owned a smart TV. I still don’t see a point in owning one. Why in the world would someone need copilot on their TV?
Unfortunately it’s getting hard to find dumb TVs. The only real options are pro-AV or digital signage displays but even a lot of those are now moving to being smart. Our 15 year old bedroom TV finally died last month and we ended up having to replace it, and we ultimately went with an LG. I’ve disabled it’s wifi though. It’s a frustrating situation. I wish one of the manufacturers with good displays would just offer a dumb line of TVs. I imagine they would still have a market even if they were higher cost to make up for the lack of ad revenue, but maybe I’m underestimating that revenue. Either way, avoiding smart TVs is getting extremely difficult these days.
I think we need a whole company that makes dumb everything. I want a dumb house. Grill, fridge, washer/dryer, TV, gaming console, floor cleaning robot, toilet, lights, oven, and everything. They need to make “The Dumb Store.”
Copilot is trash
I would be so happy if I could just disable the “magic mouse” (IIRC that’s what it’s called). I once talked to support for an unrelated reason and asked how to do that; they said the only way was to enable on screen narration.
Any time throughout the conversation I asked why those two things were connected, they dodged or outright ignored the question.
I’m on a lg c1 and the magic mouse is disabled. Without narration.
How did you do that?
I’ll double check tonight for you.
Thanks in advance!
I have to apologize for the bad info. Looks like I was confused because I bought an lg sound bar and I’ve been using that remote because it doesn’t have the capability it just doesn’t work for magic mouse.
No worries, thanks for following up.
In think they died.
Well, one viable solution is to use a non-compatible remote, but at least my TV complains every time I press a button on one.
As far as I’m concerned LG is a shithole company. I’ve gone through a TV, dishwasher, and fridge from them and all three had issues just outside warranty. That’s not bad luck thats intentional shitty engineering. Fuck them.
They used to be good. My last TV was 10 years old when I finally got a new one. New one is now 8 years old. It seems like LG and Samsung just both make super shitty appliances. In any case, I agree they can certainly both fuck off now that we know everything they make is spyware.
I am genuinely curious, this whole thing is most likely an effort to sell more TVs, but does that actually work? Is there a significant segment of customers which buys TVs based on whether or not it has a (link to a) chatbot in it? Or did some exec just decide “our products need to have AI now” with 0 research done.
I would really like to see data on this.
Or did MS pay them to include it, knowing they could hoover up a lot of data, perhaps even with a clause in the contract to also share that data with LG?
They do it because those TVs are selling.
What many people seem to misunderstand today dramatically is that no sane major manufacturer will push a genuinely risky feature. On the contrary, if something like this makes it into a product, it’s because there is an expectation of immediate or medium-term profit, backed by extensive market research. Companies aren’t stupid; they are highly optimised for this kind of decision-making. And I would honestly be glad to be proven wrong.
In other words, if the feature is there, it means that people either like it or simply don’t care enough to make it into a problem.
And here’s the hot take: don’t blame the manufacturer, blame the people. Collectively consumers have shown almost no resistance to the ongoing enshitification of the last decade.
I’m glad you’re opposed to it, and many people here are too, but in the bigger picture it is just a drop in the ocean, unfortunately.
That hot take ignores human psychology’s known weaknesses.
Blaming the public for falling victim to psychological manipulation that has been being perfected for generations is like blaming a stabbing victim for bleeding so much.
I donn’t believe this is true. Microsoft is known for trotting out garbage that nobody wants. Sometimes they back off. Sometimes they beat us down until we fall in line.
I suspect an assortment of realities that include individual partnerships on the boards, bribes, kickbacks, and more blitz style manipulation to “ensure” LG that people want this, and of course there is also the realization that they will make bank before people realize they’re getting bamboozled.
Is there a manufacturer that doesn’t ship a bunch of bloat with its televisions? Maybe Panasonic or Sony?
Monitors and projectors also work.
As far as I know, none. “Smart” in smart TVs means ads, data collection and profit, they aren’t about to leave money on the table.
The only way to get “dumb” TVs is to purchase digital signage TVs meant for in-store displays and other business use. In fact, they’re better than ordinary TVs with improved cooling and rated lifespans, specially designed to run 24 hours a day in a cafe or smth.
Unfortunately, companies don’t sell it to individuals, you have to buy it as a company. You either have to buy used or set up your own shell company. I’m this close to setting up a fake company to buy a TV, but I’m not sure if it’ll work. Hopefully there’s no secret legally binding TOS or smth.
That’s not really true. B&H sells digital signage displays to consumers and you can buy some of them from Amazon and Best buy as well
I have a Hisense that I’ve never connected to the internet. It has an input button on the remote, and I just use that to go between inputs. I’m only reminded it’s a smart TV when the power goes out and I see the Google TV boot screen.
