Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing five major TV companies.
The Attorney General says the companies are spying on Texans by secretly recording what they watch in their own homes.
The major companies being sued are Sony, Samsung, LG, as well as Hisense and TCL which are both based in China.
"Companies, especially those connected to the Chinese Communist Party, have no business illegally recording Americans' devices inside their own homes," Attorney General Paxton said in a statement.
His office claims the companies have been unlawfully collecting personal data through Automated Content Recognition technology which can then be transmitted back to the company without the user's knowledge or consent.
Newsweek reported 40 million TVs are sold in the U.S. each year, and these brands involved in the Texas lawsuit account for nearly 70 percent of the brands users reported as their "main" TV.
So, what exactly are these companies allegedly doing? They include monitoring software that users aren't aware of, Paxton's suit says. "This software can capture screenshots of a user’s television display every 500 milliseconds, monitoring viewing activity in real time, and transmit that information back to the company without the user’s knowledge or consent. The companies then sell that consumer information to target ads,” he said.
“This technology puts users’ privacy and sensitive information, such as passwords, bank information, and other personal information at risk.”