Smart TV owners are tasking AI agents with removing sponsored ads, tracking programs, and slow home screens that manufacturers set by default. The trend, known as vibe coding your TV, spread over the weekend on X. The term vibe coding, which means describing a task in simple language for AI to write and execute code, was introduced by OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy in 2025.
The most notable case involves the Xiaomi TV of developer Gathin T.'s parents. According to him, sponsored ads appeared on the screen even before entering Netflix. He provided the Claude Code model of the TV: the agent found the TV on the home Wi-Fi network, disabled 25 Xiaomi packages, and wrote a new launcher, which the author claims now looks like Apple TV.
Many smart TVs use automatic content recognition (ACR) technology: it captures everything shown on the screen, including cable TV, consoles, and HDMI devices, and sends data to the manufacturer for targeted advertising. In December 2025, the state of Texas filed lawsuits against Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense, and TCL, alleging that their TVs could take a screenshot every 500 milliseconds, or twice a second. Regulators have been dealing with this issue since at least 2017, when Vizio paid $2.2 million in a case regarding data collection from 11 million TVs without consent. In 2024, Walmart bought Vizio for approximately $2.3 billion, and its management noted the profitable advertising business of the manufacturer among the reasons for the deal.
Cleaning is done using Android Debug Bridge (ADB), a utility tool for Android, which is accessed by enabling developer mode (seven taps on the build number). The agent connects through it, compiles a list of applications, and identifies those that show ads or collect telemetry. Gathin has formatted his request as an open project cleanyourtv: it disables unnecessary applications rather than deleting them, so one script restores everything back. Root rights are not required. As of Tuesday, the project contained verified settings for 107 TV models from 37 brands, gathered 10,700 stars on GitHub, 1,200 forks, and 85 open pull requests. According to the author, within two days, several thousand people did the same with their TVs.
Users are going beyond simple cleaning. Mihir Gupta replaced the standard launcher weighing 192 MB with his own at 83 MB, Ansuv Khan reported that free memory on his parents' old Android TV increased by about 90%, and Rod Pers replaced ads with a live 3D model of an apartment where lights and fans turn on synchronously. Ryan Doyle got a screensaver with Stripe revenue and payments.
This material is prepared solely for informational purposes and does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation.
Related articles
