A warning issued by Samsung over its new smart TV range is causing concern.

The company's privacy policy for its new range warns that conversations carried out near the TVs may be recorded and transmitted to third parties as text.

The feature is one which must be turned on by the user, but Samsung has put in the warning as a protection.

The South Korean technology giant says there's no way the televisions are spying on customers.

It says the voice command feature needs to be manually activated, and shows a microphone icon when it's in use.

However the UK's Big Brother Watch is perturbed, calling the concept outrageous - and comparing it to George Orwell's novel 1984.

Samsung's policy states: "Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of voice recognition.

"While Samsung will not collect your spoken word, Samsung may still collect associated texts and other usage data so that we can evaluate the performance of the feature and improve it."

Samsung has insisted it takes customer privacy "very seriously" and any gathering of users' information is carried out with the "utmost transparency".

"Voice recognition, which allows the user to control the TV using voice commands, is a Samsung Smart TV feature, which can be activated or deactivated by the user," a spokeswoman said.

Technology giants Apple and Google came under fire in 2013 when similar concerns were raised about the storage of voice data.

Through its apps Siri and Dictation, Apple stores data for up to two years, while Google does not set an expiry for its collected data.