Watching TV with the Second-Party: A First Look at Automatic Content Recognition Tracking in Smart TVs

points us towards "no"): > [...] Unlike traditional online tracking in the web and mobile ecosystems that is typically implemented by third-party libraries/SDKs included in websites/apps, ACR is typically directly integrated in the smart TV’s operating system. [...] ... but then, in its conclusion one could make the case for "not yet" as they reference Microsoft's Recall (this, to me, makes me lean on "not yet"): > [...] Finally, although different than ACR, our auditing approach can be adopted to assess privacy risks of Recall (Microsoft, 2024) – which analyzes snapshots of the screen using generative AI (Warren, 2024). [...] Collecting my thoughts on this paper, I'm a bit disappointed that we seem to have a double-standard for the nomenclature: if the content recognition happens on a PC, then it's labeled as "generative AI" (should've probably been called LLM by the authors) and if it takes place on a TV-shaped computer (they're mostly Android TV's, after all, right?) then it's called ACR. I think that it has not been properly articulated that what people are worried about [3] is that Microsoft's Windows Recall is (or will become) "ACR with extra steps". To conclude (and extend this to the mobile phone domain), I'll leave a "thought experiment": is all the AI processing power on new mobile phones going to be used exclusively by the users, and for the users? ----- Some nuanced notes... I'm conflicted about whether to demonize ACR entirely or not. To me, "ACR" means something that is running all the time listening to user's surroundings or screenshotting a user's displayed information for the purposes of improving targeting or tracking their behavior (this seems to match Wikipedia's definition at first glance). I am in part validated by [2] as well: > [...] At a high level, ACR works by periodically capturing the content displayed on a TV’s screen and matching it against a content library to detect the content being viewed on the TV. It is essentially a Shazam-like technology for audio/video content on the smart TV (Mohamed Al Elew, 2023). However, after doing some research, I discovered that a particular knowledge field may be misusing the term (or using the ACR term for lack of a better term like "reverse image search" or "content-based image retrieval" --- CBIR, CBVIR, QBIC --- in their vocabulary), and perhaps in the process inadvertently "whitewashing" the term. Take, for example, the European Union's Intellectual Property Office's (EUIPO's) discussion paper titled "Automated Content Recognition: Discussion Paper – Phase 2 ‘IP enforcement and management use cases’" [4] (PDF). I think that they are conflating some terms like hashing, fingerprinting, watermarking and labeling it under the ACR term, then they're making valid-sounding use-cases like "smartphone solutions to detect genuine or counterfeit products" (products, by definition, are not content,... so I fail to see how ACR ties in). Perhaps someone more knowledgeable can correct me if I'm misreading the paper (I am no IP lawyer, but have worked as an Information Security Officer). I think the EUIPO paper also glosses over some possible privacy implications: e.g., they link to an article called "Are 3D printed watermarks a “grave and growing” threat to people’s privacy?" [5], but in the context of using "RFID tags or serial numbers" to protect IP on 3D printed objects ... they do not discuss the possible privacy implications of, for example, being tracked by a possible "RFID-tag-cloud" of such objects. I know that this is beyond the scope of "is there ACR running on mobile phones", but I wanted to showcase what I think is the misuse of the ACR term to expand into the physical --- "offline" --- world, in the process losing its more "academic" meaning. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_content_recognition [1]: https://cio-wiki.org/wiki/Automatic_Content_Recognition_(ACR... [2]: https://arxiv.org/html/2409.06203v1 [3]: https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/micr... [4]: https://euipo.europa.eu/tunnel-web/secure/webdav/guest/docum... [5]: https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/are-3d-printed-watermark...