What Is an Ai TV? Everything You Need to Know in 2026

If you’ve shopped for a television any time in the past year, you’ve probably noticed that “smart TV” has quietly given way to a new label: “AI TV.” Samsung and LG are both now using it as their primary marketing term, and it’s showing up on hardware at every price point — not just four-figure flagships. LG’s cheapest AI-branded set, the 32-inch Smart AI TV LB65, starts at around $210.

That shift matters for anyone buying a television in 2026, because “AI TV” isn’t just a rebrand. It reflects a real change in how these sets process picture, sound, and voice commands — and it comes bundled with a genuine privacy story that most buying guides haven’t caught up with yet. In February 2026, Samsung became the first television manufacturer to settle a lawsuit with the Texas Attorney General over how its TVs collect viewing data, a case that’s still open against four other major brands.

This guide covers what an AI TV actually is, what’s new from Samsung and LG this year, and what’s worth knowing about privacy and value before you buy one.

One quick note before we get into it: if you searched “AI TV” and landed here expecting an app, you’re thinking of a different product — there’s an unrelated Android app by the same name that teaches short AI-skills lessons. This article is about televisions.

What Is an AI TV?

An AI TV is a smart TV built around a dedicated AI processor — a chip designed specifically to analyze and adjust picture, sound, and content in real time, rather than relying on the fixed presets older smart TVs use.

Samsung’s own support materials put the distinction plainly: all Samsung AI TVs are smart TVs, but not all smart TVs are AI TVs. A smart TV just needs internet access and streaming apps. An AI TV adds a chip — usually called an NPU, or Neural Processing Unit — that actively works to make sense of whatever is on screen and adjust the picture and sound accordingly, moment to moment.

LG defines it even more specifically on the hardware side: the company’s AI TV line starts at a particular processor tier (the Alpha 5 AI Processor Gen9 and above), meaning “AI TV” isn’t just a feature bundle — it’s tied to a minimum chip requirement.

How the Technology Actually Works

The Chip Behind the Curtain

The core idea is a neural network: a set of small processing units trained to compare results and settle on the most accurate output for a given task, like sharpening a blurry frame or identifying a scene as a football match rather than a nature documentary. More neural networks generally means more granular, more accurate real-time decisions — though it’s worth being clear-eyed about where these numbers come from.

Samsung’s own 2026 buying guide states that its NQ4 AI Gen3 processor uses 128 neural networks, and its higher-end NQ8 AI Gen3 chip uses up to 768. Those are Samsung’s own published specifications, not numbers verified by an independent lab, so it’s best to treat them as a rough indicator of processing depth rather than a hard performance benchmark you can compare pixel-for-pixel against a competitor’s chip.

On-Device AI vs. Cloud AI

Most of the picture and sound processing on an AI TV happens on the device itself, which is generally faster and doesn’t require sending your viewing data anywhere. Voice assistants are a different story — asking your TV a conversational question through Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, or Perplexity typically requires an internet connection, and in some cases, an account or subscription. LG’s Gallery+ feature, for instance, uses Gemini to generate AI wallpaper art, but generating additional images beyond the initial allotment requires a paid subscription.

What AI Actually Changes

In practice, the AI processor in these TVs is doing a handful of specific jobs:

• Upscaling — filling in detail when you’re watching content below the TV’s native resolution, so a 1080p stream looks sharper on a 4K panel
• Motion handling — smoothing fast movement and, on some models, tracking small objects like a ball during sports
• Scene-adaptive picture settings — adjusting brightness, contrast, and color based on what’s on screen, rather than one fixed setting for everything
• Adaptive audio — boosting dialogue clarity or balancing sound based on room conditions
• Content recognition — automatically switching picture modes depending on whether you’re watching a movie, playing a game, or watching live sports

What’s New in 2026: Samsung vs. LG

Samsung’s Vision AI Companion

Samsung’s central 2026 platform is Vision AI Companion, or VAC — a concept the company first introduced at CES 2025 and has now rolled out across its entire 2026 TV lineup, from the flagship Micro RGB line down to Crystal UHD sets, according to Samsung Newsroom’s CES 2026 coverage.

VAC is built around conversational interaction: instead of digging through menus, you can ask the TV a question and get a spoken answer, with Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity built in as third-party AI options alongside Samsung’s own assistant. Samsung also debuted a 130-inch Micro RGB TV at CES 2026 — its largest consumer display to date — and is now guaranteeing seven years of Tizen OS software updates on 2026 models, a concrete commitment that’s worth checking against whatever TV you’re comparing it to.

LG’s webOS 26 and the Alpha 11 Processor

LG’s answer is built around its 2026 software platform, webOS 26, and what it calls Multi-AI Architecture — a system that routes your voice command to whichever AI engine (its own assistant, Gemini, or another) is best suited to answer it. The feature won a CES 2026 Innovation Award, according to the official CES Innovation Awards listing.

On the hardware side, LG’s 2026 flagship chip is the Alpha 11 AI Processor Gen3, which the company says features a “Dual AI Engine” capable of running two types of AI upscaling at once. According to LG’s own figures, reported independently by AV outlet FlatpanelsHD, the Alpha 11 Gen3 delivers roughly 50% faster CPU performance, 70% faster GPU performance, and 5.6 times faster NPU processing compared to the Alpha 9 Gen8 chip used in LG’s more affordable models. As with Samsung’s neural network counts, these are company-supplied figures rather than independently benchmarked results.

AI Is Reaching Budget TVs Too

Here’s the part most coverage of “AI TV” has missed: this isn’t just a flagship story anymore. LG’s Smart AI TV, the LB65 series, runs on the smaller Alpha 5 AI Processor Gen9 and starts at roughly $210 for a 32-inch model, according to LG’s own regional listings and coverage from tech outlet Gizmochina — and it still includes Gemini and Copilot access. Samsung has similarly extended Vision AI Companion down to its entry-level Crystal UHD sets rather than reserving it for premium models.

That’s a meaningful shift from just a couple of years ago, when AI features were effectively a flagship-only upsell.

A caveat worth stating plainly: there’s no independent, apples-to-apples benchmark comparing Samsung’s neural network chips against LG’s Alpha processors. Both companies publish their own numbers, using their own methodology, and neither is directly comparable to the other. If a specific number matters to your decision, treat it as a data point from that brand, not a settled ranking.

It’s also worth noting that Samsung, LG, Sony, TCL, and Hisense are all moving in the same direction — AI processing and voice assistants are becoming standard across the industry, not a two-brand story, even though Samsung and LG currently dominate the marketing conversation.

The Privacy Question: What AI TVs Do With Your Data

This is the part of the AI TV story that’s genuinely new, and it hasn’t shown up in most existing coverage of the topic.

What ACR Is

Long before “AI TV” became a marketing term, most smart TVs already used a technology called Automatic Content Recognition, or ACR, which identifies what’s playing on screen — whether that’s a streaming show, a live broadcast, or something connected via HDMI — in order to power content recommendations and, often, targeted advertising. As AI features get more deeply built into these platforms, ACR-driven data collection becomes part of that same broader system.

The 2025–2026 Regulatory Story

On December 15, 2025, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed lawsuits against five major TV manufacturers — Samsung, Sony, LG, Hisense, and TCL — alleging they collected and monetized viewing data through ACR technology without adequately informed consumer consent, under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. According to the Texas Attorney General’s office, the lawsuit alleges that this technology captures a fingerprint of what’s on the TV screen roughly every 500 milliseconds.

A Texas court granted a temporary restraining order against Hisense, and briefly against Samsung, halting ACR-related data collection from Texas consumers while the cases proceeded.

On February 26, 2026, Samsung became the first of the five companies to settle. Under the agreement — confirmed in the Texas Attorney General’s official release and independently reported by Recorded Future News — Samsung agreed to stop collecting ACR viewing data from Texas consumers without express, informed consent, and to rewrite its on-screen consent prompts to be “clear and conspicuous.” No monetary penalty was disclosed as part of the settlement. As of that date, the cases against Sony, LG, Hisense, and TCL remained active.

Separately, Kentucky passed a law specifically requiring consent before smart TVs can collect ACR data, becoming the first state with legislation targeting this practice by name, according to reporting from the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP).

This isn’t the industry’s first brush with this issue. The Federal Trade Commission settled with Vizio back in 2017 over similar allegations — that the company enabled ACR by default on more than 11 million TVs, including some sold before the feature existed, without clearly disclosing what was being collected.

What This Means for You

None of this means AI TVs are unsafe to own. It does mean that, as of mid-2026, data collection practices on these devices are under more active legal scrutiny than at almost any point since 2017 — and that reviewing your TV’s privacy settings during setup, rather than clicking through them, is a reasonable five-minute habit rather than paranoia. Most AI TVs let you review or limit ACR and personalized-ad settings somewhere in the privacy or “viewing information” section of the settings menu.

Is an AI TV Worth It?

There’s no universal answer here, but a few patterns from the research are worth weighing.

AI features are more likely to earn their keep if you:

• Watch a lot of compressed or lower-resolution streaming content, where upscaling has a visible effect
• Want voice-driven control instead of navigating menus
• Plan to keep the TV for five or more years, where a longer software update commitment (like Samsung’s stated seven years) has real value

They matter less if you:

• Mostly watch native 4K or HDR content already, where there’s less for the upscaler to do
• Have no interest in built-in AI assistants or generative features
• Are buying a secondary or budget TV where basic picture quality is the priority

The fact that AI features now show up on sub-$250 hardware like LG’s LB65 series means “AI TV” no longer automatically implies a premium price tag — it’s increasingly just what a current-generation TV looks like, at every price point.

How to Check Your TV’s AI Features — and Turn Them Off

If you’re not sure whether your current TV counts as an “AI TV,” check the model name or processor listed in your settings menu — Samsung and LG both use naming conventions (NQ-series, Alpha-series) that indicate AI processing tiers. In the settings menu, look for labels like “AI Picture,” “Intelligent Mode,” “Vision AI,” or “webOS AI” to see what’s enabled by default.

To limit data collection, look for a privacy or “Viewing Information Services” section in your TV’s settings, where ACR and personalized advertising can typically be reviewed or disabled. Exact menu paths vary by brand and by how recently your TV’s software has been updated, so it’s worth checking your specific model’s support page if you can’t find these settings right away.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is AI TV just a marketing term, or is it a real technology? It’s both. The underlying technology — dedicated AI processors handling picture, sound, and voice features in real time — is real and measurably different from older fixed-preset smart TVs. But “AI TV” as a label is also being pushed hard by manufacturers as the successor branding to “smart TV,” so not every use of the term signals a meaningful hardware difference.

Do I need Wi-Fi for AI TV features to work? Core picture and sound processing generally happens on-device and doesn’t require an internet connection. Voice assistant features like Gemini, Copilot, or Perplexity integration do require Wi-Fi, and some, like LG’s Gallery+ AI wallpaper generation, may also require an account or subscription.

Can I turn off AI features on my TV? Yes, generally. Most AI picture and sound modes can be toggled in the settings menu, and privacy-related data collection (like ACR) can usually be limited or disabled in a dedicated privacy or viewing-information settings section.

Does my older TV already have AI features? Possibly, if it was made in the last few years and has a marketed AI processor. Check your settings menu for AI-labeled picture modes, or look up your TV’s processor name on the manufacturer’s support site.

Is the “AI TV” app on the Google Play Store related to AI televisions? No. There’s a separate Android app called “AI TV” that offers short-form video lessons on using AI tools, made by an education company called House of Edtech. It has no connection to Samsung, LG, or television hardware.

Are AI TVs safe from a privacy standpoint? They’re not inherently unsafe, but they collect more data than older smart TVs by default, largely through Automatic Content Recognition. As of 2026, this is under active legal scrutiny — Samsung settled a Texas lawsuit over ACR consent practices in February 2026, while similar cases against Sony, LG, Hisense, and TCL remain open. Reviewing your TV’s privacy settings during setup is a reasonable precaution.

The Bottom Line

AI TV is a real shift in how televisions process what you watch, not just a rebrand of “smart TV” — but it’s also arriving at a moment when regulators are actively questioning how these same AI-driven platforms handle your viewing data. Worth paying attention to on both fronts: what a specific model’s AI features actually do for your setup, and what happens to your data once you turn the thing on. As the Texas cases against Sony, LG, Hisense, and TCL continue through 2026, that second question is likely to get clearer answers over the next several months.

SOURCES

1. Samsung Newsroom — “Samsung Unveils Vision for the Next Era of Television at CES 2026 VD Deep Dive Session,” Jan. 6, 2026. https://news.samsung.com/global/the-next-20-years-a-bright-future-for-vision-ai
2. Samsung Newsroom — “Samsung Presents ‘Your Companion to AI Living’ at The First Look During CES 2026,” Jan. 5, 2026. https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-presents-your-companion-to-ai-living-at-the-first-look-during-ces-2026
3. Samsung US — “What is AI TV? AI Smart TV Explained,” TV Buying Guide, accessed 2026. https://www.samsung.com/us/tvs/tv-buying-guide/what-is-ai-tv/
4. LG Newsroom — “LG Electronics Showcases Affectionate Intelligence in Action at CES 2026,” Jan. 7, 2026. https://www.lg.com/global/newsroom/news/corporate/lg-electronics-showcases-affectionate-intelligence-in-action-at-ces-2026/