You switch your TV on to watch something. But your TV is tracking you

Aabhas SharmaTIMESOFINDIA.COM
May 7, 2026 | 18:27 IST

A feature called ACR turns your smart TV into a “two-way mirror”. Your screen may look passive, but the system behind it is capable of observing patterns, preferences and behaviour

India’s smart TV boom has brought a sharper, more uncomfortable question into the living room: is your television quietly watching you back?

At the centre of it is a lesser-known feature called Automatic Content Recognition (ACR), a technology built into many internet-connected TVs that can identify what’s playing on your screen by analysing tiny snippets of audio or patterns of pixels.
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