Television could become big brother

By Brent Daggett

Contributing writer for End the Lie

A promotional image for Samsung Smart TVs (Image credit: Screenshot from Samsung website)

As if the inevitability of increased drones patrolling American skies, the Department of Homeland Security using keywords to monitor social networking sites and mannequins spying on consumers are all not Orwellian enough in nature, television could soon have the ability to monitor you as well.

On May 26, 2012, Verizon filed a patent (#20120304206) with the U.S. Patent Office titled  “Methods and Systems For Presenting An Advertisement Associated with and Ambient Action of Use.”

The patent would allow for image as well as audio sensors to detect your activities in your living room when watching television.

Also, the sensors would have facial and profile recognition capabilities and voice recognition technology as well.

This may seem out of the realm of believability, but here are some of the patents claims:

“1. A method comprising: presenting, by a media content presentation system, a media content program comprising an advertisement break; detecting, by the media content presentation system, an ambient action performed by a user during the presentation of the media content program and within a detection zone associated with the media content presentation system; selecting, by the media content presentation system, an advertisement associated with the detected ambient action; and presenting, by the media content presentation system, the selected advertisement during the advertisement break.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the ambient action comprises at least one of eating, exercising, laughing, reading, sleeping, talking, singing, humming, cleaning, and playing a musical instrument.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the ambient action comprises an interaction between the user and another user.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the interaction between the user and the another user comprises at least one of cuddling, fighting, participating in a game or sporting event, and talking.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the ambient action comprises an interaction by the user with a separate mobile device.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the presenting of the selected advertisement comprises directing the separate mobile device to present the selected advertisement.

7. The method of claim 5, wherein the detecting of the ambient action comprises communicating with the separate mobile device to obtain information associated with the user’s interaction with the separate mobile device; and the selecting comprises utilizing the information obtained from the separate mobile device to select the advertisement.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the detecting comprises utilizing at least one of a gesture recognition technology, a profile recognition technology, a facial recognition technology, and a voice recognition technology.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising: identifying, by the media content presentation system, the user; wherein the selecting of the advertisement is based at least partially on a user profile associated with the identified user.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising: determining, by the media content presentation system, a mood of the user in accordance with the detected ambient action; wherein the selecting of the advertisement comprises selecting the advertisement based on the determined mood of the user…”

Continued reading at:  http://endthelie.com/2013/01/15/television-could-become-big-brother/