Latest news with #AdamClarkEstes
Vox
3 days ago
- Business
- Vox
What is Google even for anymore?
is a senior technology correspondent at Vox and author of the User Friendly newsletter. He's spent 15 years covering the intersection of technology, culture, and politics at places like The Atlantic, Gizmodo, and Vice. Somewhere between asking Google's new advanced AI to explain, in detail, how to become an expert birdwatcher in my neighborhood and using Google's new AI moviemaking tool to create cartoons of my 4-pound Chihuahua fighting crime, I realized something. Either Google is having a midlife crisis or I am. It could be both. User Friendly A weekly dispatch to make sure tech is working for you, instead of overwhelming you. From senior technology correspondent Adam Clark Estes. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. I've spent the past week tinkering with Google's new AI tools, and I can confidently say the company is somewhere between crisis and glory. It may take years before we know which path wins. Google has dominated not only the way we use the web but also the web's very existence for the last 15 years, mainly through its search and advertising divisions. As AI encroaches on every corner of our digital experience, it's not clear which company will dominate the next era or how we'll interact with it. It almost certainly won't be by typing keywords into a search engine. To find something online today, you typically type some keywords into Google, pick a blue link that you think has the information you're after, and click. Companies bid on search terms in order to get their ads in front of people browsing the web, powering Google's multibillion-dollar advertising business. Your click helps publishers, including Vox, make money from ads they host on their sites, many of which Google manages. Google is dominant enough that two federal judges recently ruled that it's operating as an illegal monopoly, and the company is currently waiting to see if it will be broken up. As AI encroaches on every corner of our digital experience, it's not clear which company will dominate the next era or how we'll interact with it. The government might not be the biggest threat to Google dominance, however. AI has been chipping away at the foundation of the web in the past couple of years, as people have increasingly turned to tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity to find information online. These AI chatbots pull information from websites and present you with a tidy summary. This has become a real enough threat to Google that the number of Google searches in Safari fell for the first time ever in April. Google also recently saw its share of the search market dip below 90 percent for the first time in a decade, as AI search takes off. TikTok isn't helping either. Google recognized this inevitability a few years ago and has been trying to reinvent itself accordingly. A couple years ago, it rolled out AI Overviews, which are summaries of search results created by Google's large language model, Gemini. Then Google expanded on that concept earlier this year with AI Mode, a chatbot-based search experience also powered by Gemini that looks an awful lot like ChatGPT and Perplexity. The company announced last week that AI Mode will be rolling out to everyone in the United States in the coming weeks — just look for a sparkly button on the righthand side of the search field that says 'AI Mode.' AI Mode is how I've been trying to learn birding for the past week. Instead of plugging keywords into the old Google search box, I've been entering complex queries and getting back detailed reports. From one three-sentence prompt, AI Mode returned nearly 600 words. There were just nine links to sources, none of which I needed to click, since the chatbot had already summarized the content therein. Only by doing a little bit of digging did I realize that one of the main sources for this summary was a beginner's guide to birdwatching written by my Vox colleague Allie Volpe. This search experience, as is the case with other AI chatbots, is not always awesome. The technology is powered by large language models, which are prone to hallucinations, and so these new search tools tend to be unreliable. Then again, because AI tends to write such convincing copy, you're not always compelled to double-check the results. Publishers are seeing huge declines in traffic from Google as more people bypass the web and ask AI chatbots for information. As I learned from my birding research, it's quicker. And let's be honest, not everything you find from clicking a blue link is 100 percent accurate either. This is probably what the future of search looks like, and no, it almost certainly won't involve a list of blue links. It's unnerving for me to admit that I like the new Google. And I expect to see a lot more of it. As part of its blitz of AI announcements, Google also rolled out Gemini in Chrome, which lets the AI assistant see what you're seeing on a website. (It's currently only available for people who subscribe to Google AI Plus or AI Ultra plans or for people running beta versions of Chrome.) You can ask questions about what's on the page or ask Gemini to summarize an article. The tool can even analyze YouTube videos in real time. You can almost think of this as a more targeted version of what the new AI Mode search experience does for the entire web, and it seems useful. This is probably what the future of search looks like, and no, it almost certainly won't involve a list of blue links. While you'll undoubtedly be able to access the traditional search experience for quite some time, the sheer volume of Google's latest announcements suggests that AI everything is where we're headed. Headlines around that news echoed the gravity of it all. Reporting from Google's developer conference, Platformer's Casey Newton said, 'everything is changing and normal and scary and chill.' Tech analyst Ben Thompson declared 'the death of the ad-supported web,' thanks to Google. New York magazine's John Herrman put it more bluntly: 'Google is burying the web alive.' In the chaotic, early days of the web, Google got popular by simplifying the intimidating task of finding things online, as the Washington Post's Geoffrey A. Fowler points out. Its supremacy in this new AI-powered future is far less certain. Maybe another startup will come along and simplify things this time around, so you can have a user-friendly bot explain things to you, book travel for you, and make movies for you. In the meantime, I'll be trying to perfect my AI-generated crime-fighting Chihuahua cartoon, wondering when any of this will start to feel glorious. A version of this story was also published in the User Friendly newsletter. Sign up here so you don't miss the next one!
Vox
14-05-2025
- Vox
This life-changing piece of health tech is getting cheaper — and more advanced
is a senior technology correspondent at Vox and author of the User Friendly newsletter. He's spent 15 years covering the intersection of technology, culture, and politics at places like The Atlantic, Gizmodo, and Vice. You can imagine a future where you wear earbuds that are the interface for your voice assistant as well as your lifeline on a loud plane. Vox/Getty Images Hearing aids, like canes or orthopedic shoes, are something you don't think about a lot when you're young. But maybe you should. You probably either know someone who needs hearing aids, or you'll need them some day yourself. About 30 million people in the United States, aged 12 and older, have hearing loss in both ears, and about two-thirds of people end up with hearing loss, which can range from mild to severe, by their 70s. But talking to your parents or grandparents about getting hearing aids can be tough — I've done it. They might not like the idea of sticking things in their ear canals or confronting the difficult realities of aging and health. They surely shy away from the price tag of hearing aids, which can cost thousands of dollars and are not covered by insurance or Medicare. But plugging tiny and exorbitantly expensive speakers into your ears isn't the only way. Your mom might already own hearing aids without even knowing it. User Friendly A weekly dispatch to make sure tech is working for you, instead of overwhelming you. From senior technology correspondent Adam Clark Estes. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Hearing aids have never been more accessible — or futuristic. In April, a company called Nuance started selling glasses that double as hearing aids thanks to microphones and beam-forming speakers built into the frame. Although at $1,200, they're not cheap, they cost far less than a pair of prescription hearing aids, which tend to range from $2,000 to $7,000. Hearing aids have never been more accessible — or futuristic. You can also buy something that's legally considered a personal sound amplification product (PSAP), which is not designed to treat hearing loss but does make things louder. Some of them can play music and handle phone calls too. In the age when earbuds are ubiquitous, these devices appeal to all ages. 'It's good that we're seeing people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, talking about it, because it's totally changing the paradigm for them of engaging in hearing care earlier,' Nicholas Reed, a faculty member at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, told me. I'm a millennial, but I've also dealt with hearing loss my entire life. A bad stretch of childhood ear infections left me mostly deaf in one ear and pretty spotty in the other. I learned to read lips as a teenager and avoid conversations at loud parties in college. Some surgery in my 20s brought me closer to normal, but I could still use a little help. Related The surprising thing I learned from quitting Spotify I've spent the past few weeks trying out the Nuance glasses in various settings. They're remarkable, not only because they feel almost indistinguishable from my regular glasses but also because I forget they're hearing aids. Made by EssilorLuxottica, the company behind Ray-Ban and dozens of other glasses brands, the Nuance glasses employ some of the same technology that the Ray-Ban Meta glasses use to play music and help you talk to AI. And while the Nuance glasses don't currently offer the option to stream audio, they do help you hear what your friend is saying in a loud bar. The AirPods Pro 2, which retail for $250, work equally as well. After Apple announced last fall that a software update would unlock an accessibility setting — it's appropriately called Hearing Aid — I started using it all the time, toggling between listening to podcasts to ordering cold brew in a crowded coffee shop. In instances where I may have needed to ask people to repeat themselves in the past, I hear them fine the first time. I just have to wear AirPods all the time, which makes the glasses solution even more appealing. For most people, hearing loss typically starts in your 50s and gains momentum in your early retirement years. If you've ever been to a busy restaurant with your parents or grandparents, you know this can be alienating for the person left out and frustrating for the hearing person, too. The social isolation can lead to loneliness and anxiety, which can hasten cognitive decline and lower life expectancy. Nevertheless, neither traditional clinical hearing aids or the newer category of devices are easy fixes. Once you start wearing any sort of hearing aid, it takes time to adjust, and you might need help tweaking the sound as you get used to it. That's one reason why so many people avoid it — only one in five who need hearing aids actually have them. You can't put them in your ears and immediately have perfect hearing. Your brain adjusts over time, and so it may take weeks or months to adapt to the new frequencies hearing aids help you hear. Related How technology has inspired neuroscientists to reimagine the brain Still, it's a worthwhile project. 'Sensory input is so key to our existence, but we just sort of overlooked it for so long,' Reed said. 'It's something that's vital to your existence and how you connect with other people.' It's not clear how the latest hearing aid innovation will move the needle on adoption. Even though over-the-counter hearing aids have been available since 2022, when the FDA implemented new regulations for the devices, it's still an uphill battle to get people to wear them. 'Sensory input is so key to our existence, but we just sort of overlooked it for so long.' — Nicholas Reed, faculty member at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine 'We are not seeing large increases in hearing aid uptake since over-the-counter hearing aids have become available,' said Tricia Ashby, senior director of audiology practices at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). 'And I have to say that mimics other countries who had over-the-counter hearing aids before the US did.' Given the fact that the older people who need them most are potentially less likely to try the latest technology, it might still take a few years for over-the-counter hearing aids to go mainstream. Given the precedent set by companies like Apple and Nuance, though, it's possible that more devices will add hearing assistive features to existing products. You can imagine a future where you wear earbuds that are the interface for your voice assistant as well as your lifeline on a loud plane. You might have glasses that project walking directions onto your field of view and help you hear which direction traffic's coming from when you have to cross the street. These kinds of features together only get more important as you get older and need a little more help. 'We are in an age now where you're thinking about optimizing aging, and how do you do it?' Reed said. 'And it's things like this.'
Vox
10-04-2025
- Business
- Vox
A surprisingly useful tool for this year's tax season
is a senior technology correspondent at Vox and author of the User Friendly newsletter. He's spent 15 years covering the intersection of technology, culture, and politics at places like The Atlantic, Gizmodo, and Vice. Something unexpected happened recently as I was filing my taxes: AI helped. It even caught an error that my human accountant missed. This was surprising because when I decided to test out a free tax return chatbot, I expected it to tell me to, I don't know, write off my dog as a business expense and pay my IRS bill in magic beans. I can't say it's the first time I've underestimated AI's ability to be useful in my everyday life. I made fun of this simple AI-powered family meal planning app, and several months later, it's gotten good enough that I'm using it on a weekly basis. I used to blankly stare at ChatGPT's empty prompt field, unable to think of anything I might want an AI to do, and now, that box is on my screen at all times as I bounce ideas off the language model, like it's a half-useful intern. I don't trust the AI. But I don't ignore it, either. User Friendly A weekly dispatch to make sure tech is working for you, instead of overwhelming you. From senior technology correspondent Adam Clark Estes. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. AI is still bad at a lot of things. I encounter hallucinations and inaccurate answers almost every time I use it, so I double-check everything, which takes time. I never believe anything I read on the internet at first glance, anyway. Still, on balance, AI is now saving me so much time and improving my workflow so much that I don't mind. The latest AI models are getting good enough that it's more than worth it to find ways the software can make your life easier. Fielding your most pressing tax questions is a great example of a job AI can try. The tax bots are helpful — and pretty restrained For the 2023 tax year, both TurboTax and H&R Block launched AI-powered chatbots to help customers file their taxes. The tools did not impress Washington Post tech columnist Geoffrey Fowler, who called the chatbots 'unhelpful' and, more to the point, 'awful.' The companies rolled out the tools before they were finished, and they served up plenty of 'bad advice,' Fowler said in a review last spring. I believe him, but I also had a different experience testing the tools this time around. After last year's reported goof-ups, TurboTax and H&R Block updated their tax bots. They appear to be less bad at first glance. Compared to what I know about the original iterations, the second-generation chatbots seem more low-key and less error-prone. When I asked them really hard questions, they referred me back to help documents or to a human agent. You might think of the chatbots as a coach. They're not going to do your taxes, and they're not supposed to give you inaccurate information. But they are designed to make the process feel less stressful, according to Heather Watts, senior vice president of H&R Block's DIY tax business. 'What we've heard from feedback from users who've used it,' Watts told me, 'is it's just giving them that confidence that what they're doing is accurate, and they feel good about, ultimately, the outcome of their tax refund.' Related One quick trick to make AI actually useful Both TurboTax and H&R Block power their chatbots with proprietary large language models (LLM), trained on the tax code and their internal help documents. This should, in theory, keep the chatbots from drifting too far from dependable information and already-vetted answers to questions. When I asked H&R Block's AI Tax Assist software specific questions about itemized deductions or the child tax credit, I got clear, bullet-pointed responses that often didn't directly answer the question but rather provided generalized information. TurboTax's AI assistant answered some questions but was quick to refer me to help articles or a live human when the questions got more complicated — which is why I describe them as low-key. They're generally pretty restrained and conservative in their willingness to give actual advice. They're not trying too hard to impress you, so they don't fail too hard either. 'They're still not great in very complex situations, and I think that will take some time,' said Subodha Kumar, a professor at the Fox School of Business at Temple University. 'But they have become very good with simpler cases.' They're not trying too hard to impress you, so they don't fail too hard either. Which is not to say these AI chatbots can never be wrong. If these bots give you bad advice — and they gave Fowler from the Washington Post plenty of it last year — your tax return could get flagged by the government and require an amendment. It could cause some unnecessary stress, at best, and at worst, cost you some money. Both TurboTax and H&R Block guarantee accuracy in your finalized tax return. Both companies also tucked access to their chatbots away in the software's help menu, a couple clicks away from the form where you input your financial info. That leads me to believe that people who find them know what they're getting themselves into. And people do seem to be discovering and using these tools. TurboTax told me that while only 15 percent of its customers' questions were answered by AI in 2024, that number has grown to 65 percent this year. There are clear disclaimers about the need to proceed with caution on both platforms. A warning label does not make any product safe, but at least it signals something to the user. In this case, you should review all answers the AI provides. AI is the past and future of accounting The tax world is not new to AI. For years, accounting firms and tech companies alike have been incorporating AI tools to automate and streamline the tax-filing process. TurboTax and H&R Block have already been using AI in the background to give personalized deduction recommendations and to read uploaded documents, including W2s, in order to fill out forms more quickly. Both companies also told me they're using AI to help check the accuracy of tax returns in real time. These kinds of workflows aren't unique to the tax prep giants. In fact, AI is making everything faster through automation across the accounting industry. 'We use a lot of automations to help save us time,' said Anthony Drozd, the operations manager at Sargent CPAs, a New York-based accounting firm. 'If I had to make an educated guess, I would say we've saved about 20 percent of our time with automations that wouldn't have been possible without AI help.' Related AI wants to Google for you The next wave of AI technology, known as agentic AI, could allow the technology to not only recall information and create content but actually carry out tasks. In other words, AI isn't currently doing your taxes. But companies like TurboTax and H&R Block are slowly training their models to do more by watching you do your taxes, so that it can automate the process more in the future, and save time and money. We don't know if that agentic AI future will come to pass. In the meantime, some experts think that these AI chatbots can do more harm than good. Even if TurboTax and H&R Block have improved their models, AI chatbots are an unwelcome intermediary between someone looking for accurate information and that information in its original, vetted form, according to Emily M. Bender, a linguistics professor at the University of Washington and the co-author of The AI Con. 'You end up with something that looks like a cost-cutting measure or looks like a convenient shortcut, and at the same time, it devalues the work of the people who actually do that stuff,' Bender said. Indeed, some in the tax industry are leaning away from the chatbot approach and appealing to the demand for a personal touch. Ernst & Young, for instance, advertises its lack of a chatbot as a reason to pay for its services over the competitors. Taxes are stressful, so why worry about the reliability of the advice you got from an AI chatbot, which is effectively just a sophisticated autocomplete software program. The thing my accountant had missed was no big deal. It ended up not affecting my return this year, but my accountant later told me he was glad I flagged it. And I was glad to have a human there to help me feel a little less scared about tax season.
Vox
10-04-2025
- Business
- Vox
AI is perfect for this stressful, seasonal chore
is a senior technology correspondent at Vox and author of the User Friendly newsletter. He's spent 15 years covering the intersection of technology, culture, and politics at places like The Atlantic, Gizmodo, and Vice. Something unexpected happened recently as I was filing my taxes: AI helped. It even caught an error that my human accountant missed. This was surprising because when I decided to test out a free tax return chatbot, I expected it to tell me to, I don't know, write off my dog as a business expense and pay my IRS bill in magic beans. I can't say it's the first time I've underestimated AI's ability to be useful in my everyday life. I made fun of this simple AI-powered family meal planning app, and several months later, it's gotten good enough that I'm using it on a weekly basis. I used to blankly stare at ChatGPT's empty prompt field, unable to think of anything I might want an AI to do, and now, that box is on my screen at all times as I bounce ideas off the language model, like it's a half-useful intern. I don't trust the AI. But I don't ignore it, either. User Friendly A weekly dispatch to make sure tech is working for you, instead of overwhelming you. From senior technology correspondent Adam Clark Estes. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. AI is still bad at a lot of things. I encounter hallucinations and inaccurate answers almost every time I use it, so I double-check everything, which takes time. I never believe anything I read on the internet at first glance, anyway. Still, on balance, AI is now saving me so much time and improving my workflow so much that I don't mind. The latest AI models are getting good enough that it's more than worth it to find ways the software can make your life easier. Fielding your most pressing tax questions is a great example of a job AI can try. The tax bots are helpful — and pretty restrained For the 2023 tax year, both TurboTax and H&R Block launched AI-powered chatbots to help customers file their taxes. The tools did not impress Washington Post tech columnist Geoffrey Fowler, who called the chatbots 'unhelpful' and, more to the point, 'awful.' The companies rolled out the tools before they were finished, and they served up plenty of 'bad advice,' Fowler said in a review last spring. I believe him, but I also had a different experience testing the tools this time around. After last year's reported goof-ups, TurboTax and H&R Block updated their tax bots. They appear to be less bad at first glance. Compared to what I know about the original iterations, the second-generation chatbots seem more low-key and less error-prone. When I asked them really hard questions, they referred me back to help documents or to a human agent. You might think of the chatbots as a coach. They're not going to do your taxes, and they're not supposed to give you inaccurate information. But they are designed to make the process feel less stressful, according to Heather Watts, senior vice president of H&R Block's DIY tax business. 'What we've heard from feedback from users who've used it,' Watts told me, 'is it's just giving them that confidence that what they're doing is accurate, and they feel good about, ultimately, the outcome of their tax refund.' Related One quick trick to make AI actually useful Both TurboTax and H&R Block power their chatbots with proprietary large language models (LLM), trained on the tax code and their internal help documents. This should, in theory, keep the chatbots from drifting too far from dependable information and already-vetted answers to questions. When I asked H&R Block's AI Tax Assist software specific questions about itemized deductions or the child tax credit, I got clear, bullet-pointed responses that often didn't directly answer the question but rather provided generalized information. TurboTax's AI assistant answered some questions but was quick to refer me to help articles or a live human when the questions got more complicated — which is why I describe them as low-key. They're generally pretty restrained and conservative in their willingness to give actual advice. They're not trying too hard to impress you, so they don't fail too hard either. 'They're still not great in very complex situations, and I think that will take some time,' said Subodha Kumar, a professor at the Fox School of Business at Temple University. 'But they have become very good with simpler cases.' They're not trying too hard to impress you, so they don't fail too hard either. Which is not to say these AI chatbots can never be wrong. If these bots give you bad advice — and they gave Fowler from the Washington Post plenty of it last year — your tax return could get flagged by the government and require an amendment. It could cause some unnecessary stress, at best, and at worst, cost you some money. Both TurboTax and H&R Block guarantee accuracy in your finalized tax return. Both companies also tucked access to their chatbots away in the software's help menu, a couple clicks away from the form where you input your financial info. That leads me to believe that people who find them know what they're getting themselves into. And people do seem to be discovering and using these tools. TurboTax told me that while only 15 percent of its customers' questions were answered by AI in 2024, that number has grown to 65 percent this year. There are clear disclaimers about the need to proceed with caution on both platforms. A warning label does not make any product safe, but at least it signals something to the user. In this case, you should review all answers the AI provides. AI is the past and future of accounting The tax world is not new to AI. For years, accounting firms and tech companies alike have been incorporating AI tools to automate and streamline the tax-filing process. TurboTax and H&R Block have already been using AI in the background to give personalized deduction recommendations and to read uploaded documents, including W2s, in order to fill out forms more quickly. Both companies also told me they're using AI to help check the accuracy of tax returns in real time. These kinds of workflows aren't unique to the tax prep giants. In fact, AI is making everything faster through automation across the accounting industry. 'We use a lot of automations to help save us time,' said Anthony Drozd, the operations manager at Sargent CPAs, a New York-based accounting firm. 'If I had to make an educated guess, I would say we've saved about 20 percent of our time with automations that wouldn't have been possible without AI help.' Related AI wants to Google for you The next wave of AI technology, known as agentic AI, could allow the technology to not only recall information and create content but actually carry out tasks. In other words, AI isn't currently doing your taxes. But companies like TurboTax and H&R Block are slowly training their models to do more by watching you do your taxes, so that it can automate the process more in the future, and save time and money. We don't know if that agentic AI future will come to pass. In the meantime, some experts think that these AI chatbots can do more harm than good. Even if TurboTax and H&R Block have improved their models, AI chatbots are an unwelcome intermediary between someone looking for accurate information and that information in its original, vetted form, according to Emily M. Bender, a linguistics professor at the University of Washington and the co-author of The AI Con. 'You end up with something that looks like a cost-cutting measure or looks like a convenient shortcut, and at the same time, it devalues the work of the people who actually do that stuff,' Bender said. Indeed, some in the tax industry are leaning away from the chatbot approach and appealing to the demand for a personal touch. Ernst & Young, for instance, advertises its lack of a chatbot as a reason to pay for its services over the competitors. Taxes are stressful, so why worry about the reliability of the advice you got from an AI chatbot, which is effectively just a sophisticated autocomplete software program. The thing my accountant had missed was no big deal. It ended up not affecting my return this year, but my accountant later told me he was glad I flagged it. And I was glad to have a human there to help me feel a little less scared about tax season.
Vox
27-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Vox
Why your TV is watching you
is a senior technology correspondent at Vox and author of the User Friendly newsletter. He's spent 15 years covering the intersection of technology, culture, and politics at places like The Atlantic, Gizmodo, and Vice. Roku City, the oddly alluring cityscape screen saver, scrolls across millions of idle TVs every day. Recently, an island paradise appeared in the picture. In the foreground, a floating billboard invited me to subscribe to Disney+ and watch Moana 2 at the press of a button on my remote. The convenience, I don't mind about the new era of ad-supported everything. The wiretapping, I do. Ads are obviously not new on TV. As long as we've been watching shows on glowing boxes, we've been watching commercials that provide the economic engine for the entire entertainment factory to operate. While streaming platforms offered a reprieve for a few years by charging monthly fees for commercial-free content, it's now practically impossible to watch TV without seeing some sort of marketing. What's happening more under the radar is that your TV is collecting data about you and your watching habits — sometimes by directly monitoring what's on your screen — and serving you personalized ads on your TV or elsewhere. The screen that you once loved for private, uninterrupted Netflix-watching has become a big billboard that also spies on you. User Friendly A weekly dispatch to make sure tech is working for you, instead of overwhelming you. From senior technology correspondent Adam Clark Estes. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. This isn't just a Roku problem, although the company found itself in hot water when some users were recently required to watch a video ad — a Moana 2 trailer — before they could access their TV's home screen at all. Roku says this is just a test, but the fact that it's similar to a feature Amazon rolled out over a year ago on Prime Video suggests that ads are generally getting more brazen on streaming platforms. How you feel about it depends a lot on your mindset and feelings about privacy. Your TV wants your data The TV business traditionally included three distinct entities. There's the hardware, namely the TV itself; the entertainment, like movies and shows; and the ads, usually just commercials that interrupt your movies and shows. In the streaming era, tech companies want to control all three, a setup also known as vertical integration. If, say, Roku makes the TV, supplies the content, and sells the ads, then it stands to control the experience, set the rates, and make the most money. That's business! Roku has done this very well. Although it was founded in 2002, Roku broke into the market in 2008 after Netflix invested $6 million in the company to make a set-top box that enabled any TV to stream Netflix content. It was literally called the Netflix Player by Roku. Over the course of the next 15 years, Roku would grow its hardware business to include streaming sticks, which are basically just smaller set-top-boxes; wireless soundbars, speakers, and subwoofers; and after licensing its operating system to third-party TV makers, its own affordable, Roku-branded smart TVs. While most people think of Roku as a hardware company, it actually transitioned into becoming an advertising company almost a decade ago. In the early days, you might see a banner ad on your home screen or a tile telling you to watch Game of Thrones on HBO Go. But after firing up a more serious ad business in 2016, Roku started selling targeted ads on the Roku Channel, a free, ad-supported TV (FAST) service across its devices in 2017. Roku even started making its own content, including a biopic of Weird Al Yankovic. Your TV is collecting data about you and your watching habits — sometimes by directly monitoring what's on your screen — and serving you personalized ads on your TV or elsewhere. Things really ramped up when Roku started acquiring ad-tech companies, including Nielsen's Advanced Video Advertising business in 2021. This helped Roku gain new insights into its audience in order to target ads better and ultimately charge more money for those ads. At the end of 2024, Roku reported annual ad revenues of $3.5 billion, which accounted for 85 percent of its total revenue — far higher than its hardware business. Roku also has 90 million users — millions more than Apple TV+ — who have become a gold mine of data, not just about what they watch on TV but also who they are and what they like. Today, it's better to think of Roku not just as an advertising company or the folks who make cheap TVs and streaming sticks, but also as a data company with millions of detailed profiles. The magical world of Moana 2 made an appearance in Roku City when the movie hit streaming in March 2025. Roku Regarding the Moana 2 controversy, Roku said in a statement that the company's growth 'has and will always require continuous testing and innovation across design, navigation, content, and our first-rate advertising products.' The statement also said, 'Our recent test is just the latest example, as we explore new ways to showcase brands and programming while still providing a delightful and simple user experience.' The shift toward ad-supported everything has been happening across the TV landscape. People buy new TVs less frequently these days, so TV makers want to make money off the TVs they've already sold. Samsung has Samsung Ads, LG has LG Ad Solutions, Vizio has Vizio Ads, and so on and so forth. Tech companies, notably Amazon and Google, have gotten into the mix too, not only making software and hardware for TVs but also leveraging the massive amount of data they have on their users to sell ads on their TV platforms. These companies also sell data to advertisers and data brokers, all in the interest of knowing as much about you as possible in the interest of targeting you more effectively. It could even be used to train AI. The wealth of Roku's first-party data could be a gold mine for Amazon or Google, according to Laura Martin, an analyst at the investment bank Needham and Company. 'Roku is the perfect size with a really strategic fit,' Martin told me, referring to a possible Amazon purchase. She added that Roku's data could also be a boon for any company with AI ambitions, including OpenAI. 'If I was a large language model, this is data I would absolutely want to own.' The streaming industry has faced a reckoning in recent years too: After years of prioritizing growth over all else, companies like Netflix and Disney finally had to start making money. That's resulted in those companies charging more, bundling services, and introducing cheaper ad-supported tiers. For better or worse, ads are the future of the TV business, just as they were its past. 'For consumers, it's definitely a complicated ecosystem,' said Jon Giegengack, founder of Hub Entertainment Research. Giegengack argues, though, that this ecosystem is ultimately better for consumers. In effect, there's a streaming option that works for any budget, and ads fill in the gaps. Related The streaming boom is over But not everyone is thrilled to be bombarded by ads and to have their data passively harvested. More ads also means less attention paid to the content you want to watch and more to the ads these companies want you to see. Nevertheless, the trade-off is worth it to a lot of Americans. Some 43 percent of all streaming subscriptions in the United States were ad-supported by the end of last year, according to the market data firm Antenna. Even if you pay for an ad-free tier, you're contributing to the ad ecosystem by giving up your data to whatever streaming platforms you use and even the company that makes your TV. Is it possible to escape the ads? Breaking free from this ad prison is tough. Most TVs on the market today come with a technology called automatic content recognition (ACR) built in. This is basically Shazam for TV — Shazam itself helped popularize the tech — and gives smart TV platforms the ability to monitor what you're watching by either taking screenshots or capturing audio snippets while you're watching. (This happens at the signal level, not from actual microphone recordings from the TV.) Advertisers and TV companies use ACR tech to collect data about your habits that are otherwise hard to track, like if you watch live TV with an antenna. They use that data to build out a profile of you in order to better target ads. ACR also works with devices, like gaming consoles, that you plug into your TV through HDMI cables. Yash Vekaria, a PhD candidate at UC Davis, called the HDMI spying 'the most egregious thing we found' in his research for a paper published last year on how ACR technology works. And I have to admit that I had not heard of ACR until I came across Vekaria's research. 'They haven't kept it secret, but there's no awareness about it,' Vekaria told me. 'So if people don't know, they will not question it.' One surprising thing It's very difficult to watch streaming TV and avoid ads altogether these days. One, perhaps surprising option? Your local library. An app called Kanopy taps into the collections of local libraries across the country and has tons of great classic movies, documentaries, and indie films. It's also free and ad-free — all you need is a library card. While ACR is popular across platforms, Roku is especially excited about the technology. Many of the companies that Roku has acquired in recent years have been working on ACR, and a Roku-owned company won an Emmy in 2023 for its work on the technology. Roku has also said that, because its share of the TV operating system market is 40 percent, the scale of its data collection capabilities is 'unparalleled.' Unfortunately, you don't have much of a choice when it comes to ACR on your TV. You probably enabled the technology when you first set up your TV and accepted its privacy policy. If you refuse to do this, a lot of the functions on your TV won't work. You can also accept the policy and then disable ACR on your TV's settings, but that could disable certain features too. In 2017, Vizio settled a class-action lawsuit for tracking users by default. If you want to turn off this tracking technology, here's a good guide from Consumer Reports that explains how for most types of smart TVs. To be honest, after learning about all this in the past week or so, I haven't done anything revolutionary. I can actually buy into the idea that more relevant ads provide a better experience. I don't need to see ads for a dozen different eczema treatments while I'm watching YouTube TV, because I don't have eczema. I'm okay learning about a new toy for young kids, because I have a young kid. (Advertising to kids — or even letting your kids watch YouTube — is an entirely different matter.) So I've agreed to all the privacy policies and am enjoying my streaming content as the industry intended. But it does bug me, just on principle, that I have to let a tech company wiretap my TV in order to enjoy all of the device's features. If you're set on an ad-free TV experience, your best bet is to buy an old dumb TV off eBay and never connect it to a Roku, Amazon, or Google device. You can buy an antenna for network television, and a DVD player for movies. There are worse Y2K trends to resurrect than being completely offline for a few precious leisure hours. A version of this story was also published in the User Friendly newsletter. Sign up here so you don't miss the next one!
