Texas sues five smart TV makers over deceptive ACR data collection
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued five smart TV manufacturers—Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense, and TCL—for allegedly using automated content recognition technology to collect and sell consumer viewing data without adequate disclosure or genuine consent, employing deceptive design practices to manipulate users into opting in. The lawsuit alleges the companies combine this viewing data with metadata to infer sensitive personal information about consumers' race, sex, religion, and political beliefs.
What happened
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued five smart TV manufacturers—Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense, and TCL Technology Group Corporation—on December 15, 2025, alleging they use automated content recognition (ACR) technology to collect and sell ad-targeting data without adequate disclosure or genuine consumer consent.
The complaints allege the companies employ "dark patterns" to manipulate users into opting in to ACR, making activation easy while requiring many clicks to opt out. For example, Samsung allegedly offers one-click enrollment during setup but requires more than 15 clicks across multiple menus to disable the feature.
The lawsuits claim ACR captures viewing habits from streaming apps, cable, gaming consoles, Blu-ray players, security cameras, and HDMI-connected devices, then combines this data with metadata to infer sensitive personal attributes about race, sex, religion, and political beliefs.
Reported impact
Nearly three-quarters of U.S. households are equipped with smart TVs using ACR technology, according to the lawsuits.
ACR data collection can continue even when a TV is offline and be sent to manufacturers during reconnection or firmware updates.
Index analysis
The Texas Attorney General alleges the companies are violating the state's Deceptive Trade Practices Act by collecting ACR data without adequate disclosure and obtaining consent "in a deceptive or misleading manner."
Paxton stated he plans to amend complaints to include violations of Texas's privacy law unless the companies cure the alleged violations within 30 days. The attorney general noted concerns about Hisense and TCL's ties to China and the potential for data harvesting by the Chinese government.
Governance controls
In 2017, the FTC and New Jersey Attorney General fined Vizio $2.2 million for using ACR to capture data on 11 million consumers without their knowledge or consent. By 2021, Vizio reported that more of its profits came from selling consumer data collected through ACR than from selling TVs.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.