What ACR ("Live Plus") is, and how to turn it off
Automatic content recognition (ACR) is a smart-TV feature that identifies what's on screen. Manufacturers document it in their own settings and agreements, academic researchers have measured how it works, and in LG's case it's the subject of a 2026 settlement with the State of Texas. This page covers how it works, what LG says the data is used for, and what turning it off changes.
The details below are LG-specific. Samsung runs the same kind of feature under the name "Viewing Information Services." Vizio's version is called "Viewing Data," and Vizio's current privacy policy describes it as opt-in rather than on by default. See each model's own page for what's confirmed about it.
How the fingerprinting works
Researchers at UC Davis, University College London, and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid measured this directly and published it at the 2024 ACM Internet Measurement Conference. Their finding: smart TVs "captured snapshots of audio or video as often as every 10 milliseconds, batched them and used an algorithm to generate a 'fingerprint'" — a compressed signature, not a stored recording — which is then "sent to a company server and matched against a database of all the content available through the TV service" to identify what's on screen.
LG's own Viewing Information Agreement — the full legal text behind the Live Plus consent screen, normally only seen in the TV's own Settings menu — is specific about the audio pathway this uses: the ACR software "identifies content by continuously analyzing audio signals it receives directly from the soundboard integrated with your television's speakers; it does not receive any information directly from the microphone on your television or your remote(s)." So Live Plus works from what the TV is already playing through its own speakers, not from a microphone. Whether a given model has a microphone at all is a separate question, answered on that model's own page.
What it can identify
The same research found the fingerprinting "successfully tracked content from a laptop or gaming console connected by HDMI cable", so it isn't limited to the TV's own apps. In a statement on 12 September 2026, LG said its ACR covers "Live TV, HDMI-connected devices, and LG Channels", and does not run inside third-party apps such as Netflix or YouTube.
What LG says it's for
In the same statement, LG says Viewing Information may be shared with LG Ad Solutions, LG's advertising business, for audience segmentation, and that interest-based advertising needs a separate consent. Pocket-lint's guide (below) also describes it as feeding content recommendations.
Is it on by default?
LG's 12 September 2026 statement says ACR is "turned off by default" and only runs once you accept the Viewing Information Agreement. Earlier, Pocket-lint (December 2025) reported that Live Plus was enabled by default on its reviewer's set. Defaults can differ by model year, region and software version, so check the setting on your own TV.
Separate agreements, separate settings
Live Plus isn't the only agreement involved. LG's separate, optional Interest-Based & Cross-Device Advertising Agreement describes using viewing data for ads on the TV and on "other digital devices that share the same IP address as your Smart Media Product, such as your laptop, mobile phone or tablet."
A third optional agreement, "Who.Where.What?", shares viewing data with The Painted Dog, Inc. (branded "TheTake") for a shoppable-content feature that lets you buy products you see on screen. LG's agreement text says the information this feature collects can include a "captured image of the content watched."
Each agreement is optional and can be declined separately in the TV's Settings menu. Declining Live Plus alone doesn't decline the other two, so it's worth checking all three.
The Texas settlement
In December 2025, the Texas Attorney General sued five TV manufacturers — Samsung, LG, Sony, Hisense, and TCL — over ACR data collection. On May 11, 2026, Texas announced a settlement with LG: LG agreed not to use ACR to collect viewing data without informed consent, and to add an on-screen disclosure explaining what's collected and how to opt out. The agreement also prohibits transferring viewing data to Chinese Communist Party-linked entities. The cases against the other manufacturers were reported as still active at the time of writing.
What turning it off changes
Live Plus has a settings toggle — see your model's page for the exact menu path where we've verified one. The IMC 2024 study found that opting out in the TV's settings stopped traffic to the ACR servers on the LG and Samsung sets it tested. We haven't run our own network tests, so this site relies on that study and on LG's own documentation.