LG’s Ad Solutions division has entered into a new multi-year partnership with AI marketing platform Zenapse, with the two companies coming together to build “a new frontier for Connected TV (CTV) advertising.” This alliance will see the firms join forces to better leverage their respective strengths:LG’swide-reachingwebOSsmart TV platform, and Zenapse’s emergent Large Emotion Model (LEM) technology.
“This collaboration furthers LG Ad Solutions' commitment to innovation and delivering advanced, emotionally intelligent advertising tools for global brands. By combining LG’s scale and CTV expertise with Zenapse’s industry-first emotional AI and psychographic targeting, the companies aim to redefine viewer engagement, personalization, and campaign performance,” readsa newsroom press release.
LEM tech has the potential to unlock a new breed of highly potent ads.
“It helps decode a viewer’s mindset – what motivates them, what resonates – so brands can deliver more relevant and compelling marketing messages,” an LG spokespersontold StreamTV Insider(via Digital Trends).
In other words, LEM tech has the potential to unlock a new breed of highly potent ads, which can, theoretically, surface targeted commercials that act on a user’s particular emotional state of being. From the perspective of an advertiser, this is an exciting prospect. As an end-user with an always-connectedLG TVin my home, however, I’m not exactly jumping for joy at this development.
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Large Emotion Model (LEM) tech is about as dystopian as it sounds
Personally, I’m the owner of a single LG smart TV, which sits nestled away in my living room corner. Like all other internet-enabled TVs from the company, my unit runs the proprietary webOS operating system. For the most part, I don’t mind webOS, though I find its interface to be a bit cluttered when compared to the likes of AppletvOSorGoogle TV.
However, there is one thing I genuinely dislike about webOS: LG employs the use of a technology calledautomatic content recognition(ACR). By default, ACR tracks what you watch, and it then harvests said analytic data to help deliver personally targeted ads. Of course, LG is far from the only smart TV company that uses ACR, but that’s neither here nor there.
While I can tolerate (and, in some cases, even appreciate) a baseline level of targeted ads and commercials being served to me, I reckon the infusion of “emotional intelligence AI capabilities” is a step too far. From my perspective, the ability for an AI algorithm or Large Emotion Model to preemptively psychoanalyze my state of mind lands well beyond the uncanny, possibly emerging somewhere in the ballpark of dystopian nightmare territory.
…I’d hope to see LG implement a webOS toggle to turn off LEM functionality at the system level.
Of course, it’s possible that my concerns are overblown, or that the majority of LG TV owners won’t take massive issue with this development. It’s equally possible that a negative consensus might take hold – customer backlash is certainly a plausible outcome. If nothing else, I’d hope to see LG implement a webOS toggle to turn off LEM functionality at the system level – in my opinion, user choice and transparency are key consumer protections that need to be honored at all costs.
For the time being, there’s no word on when Zenapse’s LEM tech might actually land on consumer-facing LG TVs. It’s unclear whether existing LG models that run the webOS operating system will gain access to the LEM system via an over-the-air software update, or whether the tech will be made exclusive to newly-sold flat panels going forward.
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