People are using AI to make their smart TVs dumb again

The latest use case for AI? Dumbing down your smart TV to get rid of the bloat. A number of developers and vibe coders have recently been sharing solutions for “vibe-coding” your TV to get rid of sponsored ads, speed up the app launcher, redesign the home screen, disable tracking features, and more.

One such solution, called “dumbtv,” describes its mission on its GitHub page thus: “Your TV should do what you paid for: your apps, your HDMI inputs, and nothing else. No ads from the TV itself, no watch tracking, no update you did not ask for.”

Another, “cleanyourtv,” promises to strip the bloatware from any Android TV or Google TV over Wi-Fi, to replace the launcher with one that resembles Apple TV.

While hacking consumer electronics devices to gain more control over their systems is hardly a new idea, the latest advances in AI technology have made such efforts much more accessible to anyone. With smart TVs in particular, the hacks come at a time when people have grown frustrated with being forced to watch ads and put up with their devices surveilling their viewing habits.

Modern smart TVs ship with a technology called Automatic Content Recognition (ACR), which identifies what’s playing on the screen using screenshots, audio clips or other forms of digital fingerprinting.