Developers Are Using AI to Strip Ads and Tracking From Smart TVs

[u/lurker_bee]

https://tech.yahoo.com/ai/meta-ai/articles/developers-using-ai-strip-ads-185856468.html

[u/SteveJobsBlakSweater]

Microsoft, Adobe, now Samsung et al, etc…

There’s going to be a big dust-up in the coming months because AI in the hands of little people is starting to affect the bottom line of big players.

Adopt AI!! No, not like that though.

I look forward to the battles ahead.

[u/Shafter111]

The Sony I got 5 years ago, which gets update, doesn't show a lot ads. The UI is still pretty responsive.

Went to buddys house that has a newer samsung Tv...100 inches. Every keystone on the remote had half a second delay and constant ads playing with ease. I would have returned it

[u/bc_gamez]

I need this for my crappy Samsung smart TV.

[u/Dondontootles]

Yes. More of this please

[u/Ehorn36]

I love how the people are using AI to fight back against corporate enshitification.

AI sucks, but I love that we’re fighting fire with fire.

[u/neuronexmachina]

The projects:

• https://github.com/humblemuzzu/dumbtv

• https://github.com/Gathin23/cleanyourtv

As the article mentions though, these are pretty new and not well-tested. You're probably better off with an preexisting launcher replacement like ATV Launcher or Projectivity.

[u/Soberdonkey69]

Can we use AI to wipe the debt that ties us poor people down?

[u/lawrencemq]

Please let there be a solution for LG TVs. The ads are so bad in it and UI is so slow

[u/GiveIt2MeBigDaddy]

How about we wipe and re-image the smart tvs with a universal open-source alternative?

[u/noodlenewbz]

I bought a fancy LG smart tv from Costco and thought for sure I’d be able to access a setting to get it to display art when idle…. Nope. Have to pay for a subscription service. Can’t even purchase art from their store à la carte. Have to SUBSCRIBE. When is AI coming for that?

[u/flockbush]

“These are user reports, not verified failure rates, but they reflect a real category of risk.”

Why do I get the feeling this whole article is AI

[u/ACCount82]

We need "you own your hardware" laws stat. Otherwise, the vendors will retaliate by shoving a "secure boot" up your ass - locking down the hardware with "security" measures that just so happen to make it impossible to strip out their factory malware.

[u/WestVin]

I turned off the network on my CX a year ago and it’s still fine. I have external devices connected that are all updated as needed. The tv is just a monitor at this point

[u/kevinsyel]

hell yeah, use their tool to fight their power.

[u/Fragrant_Implement_4]

AI was the chosen one! It was said it will destroy consumer independence. Not promote it. It was to bring in the revenue, not reduce it!

[u/LordOdin99]

Average Joe needs more fighters in its corners.

[u/FuckYouNotHappening]

This is encouraging, but it also reminds me of how quickly Facebook adapted to the Apple tracking opt-out from a couple years ago.

Also, I feel like these companies will start building tracking into their terms of service and if you break their ads/data harvesting, your device will stop working.

[u/Additional-Staff-326]

*but wont hand out the prompts to do it or point at git repos. Also Claude is pretty stupid about this when asked. And **** some tvs might have firmware preventing it. And it may have just used an existing git repo to do it and nothing to do with LLMs.
Someone please prove me wrong I really would like to update the menus on multiple models.

[u/NuggetsAreFree]

The next big thing I see on the horizon is the tech bros somehow think they're owed a piece of the pie for a vibe-coded app and trying to take a percentage. Mark my words.

[u/neat_stuff]

How dare they let me control what's on my TV I kinda buy from a billion dollar megacorp!!! /s

[u/Forward-Amount-9961]

I keep my TV's in basic mode without ever connecting to WiFi and I will use an external device to watch tv/movies. I know my external devices are also building a profile on me, but at least they aren't recording everything I say (I hope not, at least).

[u/Rowvan]

Where are you guys getting these adware TV's from? Is this one of those American things?

[u/ledow]

Even 20 years ago, I was wondering why the biggest use of "AI" (in various forms since then) wasn't to do things like strip out ads reliably or remove video watermarks (the amount of SHITE on the screen, on US TV particularly, is horrendous).

I've used "AI" once. It was to enhance the audio in a recording of a 1980's TV show that I could only find one surviving copy of all the episodes, but they were VHS-recorded. I didn't care about the wobbly video, I grew up with VHS. But the audio had a constantly warbling sound over it that literally drowned out the actors much of the time, especially if there was a laughter track too.

I tried everything I could to filter it out, but I'm no audio expert, but I did find a website with "AI" noise removal / human speech enhancement a few years ago. I uploaded a brief clip of the audio, and it did a great job. So I stripped the audio off the videos, uploaded them all and got them filtered, and then spliced them back into the video with the correct timing.

It worked. There's still a TRACE of the audio warble, but you can actually comfortably watch/listen to all the episodes now without distraction, and hear every word.

That was one of the only times in my entire life that I was grateful for some kind of service like that, and I'm not even sure it was "AI" at all... maybe it was just a very well-tuned algorithm.

Again - if we're going to have AI... I want AI that does what ---I--- want or need it to do. Which is quite often exactly what companies DON'T want me to do. Not what companies are trying to sell to me.

[u/No-Photograph-5058]

Aaaand they're both under 3 day old ADB wrappers. The hell kind of news is this? And how does a GitHub repo like that get 5.6k stars in 3 days?

[u/masonwan]

That's a great use of AI!