AI Is Being Used to Make Smart TVs 'Dumb' Again

One GitHub project, called dumbtv, describes its mission as: “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 project, cleanyourtv, promises to strip bloatware from any Android TV or Google TV over Wi-Fi and replace the launcher with one that resembles Apple TV.

Hacking consumer electronics to gain more control over their systems is not a new idea, but recent advances in AI have made such efforts much more accessible, according to the report. The interest comes as smart TV owners grow frustrated with forced ads and devices that monitor their viewing habits. Modern smart TVs use Automatic Content Recognition, or ACR, which identifies what is playing on screen through screenshots, audio clips or other forms of digital fingerprinting.

If these “dumb TV” hacks become more popular among everyday consumers, they could disrupt the smart TV ad industry, which profits by selling viewing data to advertisers or using it to show personalized ads on their own interfaces, TechCrunch AI reported.

Gathin T., the creator of cleanyourtv, wrote that the idea began one afternoon when he grew tired of seeing ads on his parents’ TV set. He said he had Claude Code clean it up over Wi-Fi and build a simple home screen with just their apps, then posted the prompt on GitHub and shared before-and-after results. A few thousand people did the same to their own TVs over the next two days, he said, across Xiaomi, TCL, Sony, Fire TV, LG and “a projector or two.”

The cleanyourtv method does not require root access to the TV and does not make it impossible to return the device to factory defaults, according to the report. The dumbtv solution has been tested end-to-end on a Fire TV Edition television and on Android and Google TV platforms from Sony, TCL, Philips, Hisense, Xiaomi and Shield. To use it, the developer suggests pointing a preferred AI agent at the dumbtv repository on GitHub. All of the solutions are works in progress, and users are testing them across different TV platforms while suggesting updates and fixes.

Some individuals have used AI agents directly. In a viral post on X, Ryan Doyle said he sent Claude Code the listing for his TV and asked, “can you hack this?” The agent then talked him through the process, he said, allowing him to remove ads and bloatware, speed up a lagging interface and customize his screensaver. He demonstrated in a video that the new interface was fast and responsive after the changes. Another X user, Mihir Gupta, wrote: “One afternoon with Claude Code: 25 bloat apps disabled, the 192 MB stock launcher replaced with a custom 83 MB one, plus rotating wallpapers.”

The results have been mixed, according to TechCrunch AI. Some people found that Claude would not respond to simple suggestions to “hack my TV,” requiring more complex prompts. Others warned that AI agents could make mistakes, possibly disabling important packages or breaking things in the process. One person said they bricked an Android TV using Claude, and another got stuck halfway through hacking a Fire TV.

For those wary of using AI to fully hack their TVs, there are existing options for customizing Android-based smart TVs, including home screen replacement apps ATV Launcher, Projectivity Launcher and FLauncher.