LG is contradicting themselves here. In order to detect a wake word then they must be collecting or recording ambient conversations.
I don't know how LG TVs do it, but e.g. many smartphones use a dedicated ASIC/audio processing chip that does not really record anything, but specifically listens for the wake word and discards all other audio to save power/battery life. I think this distinction is relevant, because there is a huge privacy difference between streaming a live audio stream to the cloud to detect a wake word and a specialized audio processor that has a small buffer only for detecting the wake word, where the audio does not leave that processor.
Theoretically, you could call that few-second buffer recording, but I don't think that would be collecting/recording ambient conversations to most people, since it's ephemeral and does not leave your device.
The question, of course, is what happens in LG TVs.
Fair points, but if a device can detect words in my ambient conversations and depending on what it detects (accurate or not) it can send that audio to the cloud, I would describe that device as “collecting or recording ambient conversations”
I think that was only done back when the processing power needed was relatively high, or for power constrained devices. I'd be really surprised if they do that for a smart TV.