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A new study has found that popular smart TVs from Samsung and LG are constantly monitoring users’ screen activity, taking screenshots as often as every 10 milliseconds. This is called Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) and it captures images and audio from your TV to see what’s on the screen and then uses that data for targeted ads.

The study by a research group led by Yash Vekaria from University of California, looked at how ACR works on two of the most used smart TV brands. Their findings on arXiv showed that Samsung smart TVs take screen events every half second and LG takes screenshots every 10 milliseconds. …

The data is then analyzed using AI to compare it to a massive media library to figure out what’s on the screen. Advertisers can then serve ads to users based on their viewing habits. Crucially, the researchers also found that ACR works differently by region; in the UK, TVs didn’t send data during broadcasts, while in the US, data was sent even during HDMI usage.