My smart TV updated itself last month, and the home screen — the thing I see every time I turn it on — became noticeably more about selling me things than showing me my apps. Ads for shows I will never watch, sponsored rows I cannot remove, and a faint suspicion that the microphone of features is longer than the list of benefits. So a TechCrunch report this week landed with me personally: some smart TV owners are now using AI agents to strip the ads and tracking out of their TVs — using coding agents to remove the "smart" parts and make the television fast, quiet, and theirs again.
It sounds like a quirky hobbyist story. I think it is actually one of the most revealing consumer-tech stories of the year. Let me explain what people are doing, why they are doing it, and what it tells us about where AI agents are really going.
What people are actually doing
Per TechCrunch's reporting, owners are asking AI agents to remove advertising and tracking software from their TVs and to replace sluggish manufacturer interfaces with something lighter. These are devices that were never designed to be customized this way — televisions ship as sealed appliances, not open computers — yet coding agents are proving capable of navigating that modification work with their owners: exploring the system, identifying the components responsible for ads and telemetry, and disabling or replacing them under direction.
The details vary by brand and model, and this is emphatically not a one-click consumer feature. It is technically-inclined owners, armed with an agent that can read documentation, write and adjust scripts, and troubleshoot errors conversationally. What used to require forum archaeology across forty tabs now happens as a dialogue: "the home screen still phones home to this address — block it," and the agent works the problem.
Why the TV became the villain
To understand the rebellion, you have to understand what the modern smart TV actually is. The hardware is often sold near cost — sometimes below it — because the real product is the platform: advertising inventory on your home screen, viewing data, and a cut of every subscription sold through the TV's store. That is why a huge, capable television can cost less than the phone in your pocket. You are not the only customer; you are also the inventory.
Owners feel this in small daily frictions. Interfaces that get slower and more promotional with every update. Screens that rearrange themselves to push sponsored content. Privacy policies nobody reads, governing data nobody remembers agreeing to share. I have set up enough client offices and family living rooms to recognize the pattern: the TV is the one device in the house that people actively resent, and resentment is exactly the soil DIY movements grow in.
The bigger story: agents as universal remote controls for computing
Here is why I think this odd little trend matters beyond televisions. For two years, the agent conversation has been dominated by office work — code, documents, tickets, spreadsheets. The TV story points somewhere else: agents as a general-purpose way for ordinary owners to renegotiate their relationship with all their devices. The skill being automated is not programming; it is the confidence to modify things you own, with an expert on call who never gets tired of your questions.
I have felt this shift in my own work. Tasks I once quoted as specialist hours — cleaning a bloated WordPress install, scripting a migration, debugging a weird server behaviour — are now conversations with an agent where my value is judgment, not keystrokes. TV owners are discovering the consumer version of the same leverage. When modification becomes a conversation, "sealed appliance" becomes a suggestion rather than a fact.
Why TVs, specifically? Because they were the worst offenders
It is not an accident that this movement started with televisions rather than, say, laptops. Laptops annoyed us with bloatware for decades, but they remained computers — you could uninstall things, and everyone knew it. TVs crossed a different line. They are the largest screen in the home, placed at its centre, used by every generation of the family — and they became advertising surfaces that also track. The home screen is unavoidable; you cannot watch anything without passing through it. When people describe the feeling, the word that recurs is "hijacked."
There is also a generational irony here that I cannot resist noting. The same households cutting streaming subscriptions to save money are watching the remaining services grow ad tiers, on a television whose manufacturer is also inserting ads, on hardware they paid for outright. Three layers of advertising wrapped around content they are renting. At some point a person with a laptop, an agent, and a free Saturday decides the stack needs an editor — and becomes one. I would bet manufacturers' own product teams contain people who have done exactly this to their TVs at home, quietly, and would never say so at work.
And notice what the owners in these reports are mostly not doing: they are not pirating content or stealing services. They are subtracting — removing ads, removing tracking, simplifying an interface. Subtraction is a much more sympathetic, mainstream-friendly motivation than circumvention, which is why I expect the pressure it creates to land differently inside the industry.
The cautions, because there are real ones
Enthusiasm noted, the fine print matters. Modifying a TV's software can void warranties, break future updates, or — done carelessly — brick the device entirely. There is a meaningful difference between disabling telemetry on hardware you own and circumventing paid services, and the line deserves respect. Security cuts both ways, too: a TV opened up by an enthusiastic owner and left unpatched can become the weakest device on a home network, which is the exact opposite of the privacy goal that started the project. My rule from the website world applies unchanged: back up first, change one thing at a time, and know how to factory-reset before you begin.
There is also a legal-grey flavour to some of this depending on jurisdiction and terms of service — another reason the movement will likely stay hobbyist rather than mainstream, at least for now.
What I hope manufacturers notice
The healthiest outcome here is not a million modified TVs. It is manufacturers realizing that a visible minority of their best customers are spending weekends undoing the product — and asking why. A paid "clean mode" with no ads and no tracking would sell. Faster interfaces would sell. The TV industry spent a decade optimizing the home screen for advertisers; an agent-powered hobbyist movement is what it looks like when the audience starts optimizing it back.
What a saner TV market could look like
Let me end the analysis with the version of this story I would actually like to live in, because none of its ingredients are fantasy. Imagine the next TV you buy offering, at setup, a genuine choice: the platform-subsidized mode with ads and personalization, or a clean mode for a one-time fee — the tracking off, the interface instant, the home screen showing your apps and nothing else. The hardware makers would make money either way; the streaming services would still have their own apps and their own ad tiers inside them, where ads at least belong to the content bargain. Some manufacturers already gesture at pieces of this — better privacy toggles, "basic TV" modes buried in settings — and every gesture exists because the demand is real.
Until that choice is offered at setup, the agent-assisted workaround remains the only way some owners can buy back their own living rooms. I expect the technique to spread quietly through enthusiast communities this year, model by model, the way router firmware flashing did a generation ago. The manufacturers who read that spread as a market signal will profit from it. The ones who read it as a piracy problem will deserve what happens next.
Conclusion
People using AI agents to de-smart their televisions is funny, a little rebellious, and quietly important. It shows agents escaping the office and becoming tools of ownership — ways for people to reshape the technology they bought into the technology they wanted. The TVs were never really ours while the home screen belonged to advertisers. Some owners, with an agent's help, are taking theirs back.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are smart TV owners doing with AI agents?
According to TechCrunch, some owners are using AI coding agents to remove advertising and tracking software from their TVs and replace sluggish built-in interfaces with lighter alternatives.
Why do smart TVs have so many ads?
TV hardware is often sold at very thin margins because manufacturers make money from the platform instead — home-screen advertising, viewing data, and revenue shares from streaming services. The ads are part of the business model, not an accident.
Is modifying a TV's software risky?
It can be. Risks include voiding the warranty, breaking future updates, or rendering the TV unusable if something goes wrong. Backing up, changing one thing at a time, and keeping the factory-reset path handy are essential precautions.
Is it legal to remove ads and tracking from my own TV?
It depends on your jurisdiction and the manufacturer's terms of service. Modifying hardware you own is generally on firmer ground than circumventing paid services, but the details vary — check before you start.
Why does this trend matter beyond TVs?
It shows AI agents becoming general tools for modifying and controlling consumer technology — work that previously needed specialist skill. That shifts power from manufacturers toward owners across many device categories.
Will manufacturers respond?
Possibly. A visible DIY movement is market research: it demonstrates real demand for ad-free, private, fast interfaces that some customers would happily pay a premium to get officially.
