Tesla vehicles are ‘soon’ going to talk, Elon Musk releases preview

Tesla vehicles are apparently going to talk to people not only inside the car but also outside. CEO Elon Musk even released a quick preview video.

It’s no secret that Tesla wants to use more artificial intelligence in its business.

Two years ago, Tesla hired Andrej Karpathy to lead its computer vision and AI team, and they have been expanding their team since then.

Tesla’s primary use of AI is obviously in the development of self-driving capability, but the automaker has also been expanding it to other things.

For example, it has developed a neural net for weather detection.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has also been pushing for better voice commands to control Tesla vehicles, and he even said that eventually, the vehicles will be able to answer, leading to a Knight Rider KITT-like artificial intelligence in Tesla vehicles.

He made the comment a while ago, but it’s apparently still in the plans since Musk tweeted today:

Teslas will soon talk to people if you want. This is real.

The announcement came with a short video sneak peek at the new feature from Tesla:

Teslas will soon talk to people if you want. This is real. pic.twitter.com/8AJdERX5qa

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 12, 2020

In the video, a Tesla Model 3 can be heard saying, “But don’t just stand there staring, hop in,” followed by another, less audible comment.

As we previously reported, Tesla changed the underside of the front end of the Model 3 to have a speaker grill last year.

The move was in preparation of Tesla adding a pedestrian warning system to the Model 3 as per regulatory requirements for quiet vehicles in the US and Europe.

Last year, Tesla released an update to Model 3 for an audible tone to play when the vehicle is moving slowly (up to 19 mph) in either drive or reverse.

It sounds like Tesla wants to take advantage of being forced to add outside speakers to its cars and launch new features utilizing them.

Musk didn’t elaborate on when the new feature is going to be pushed, but he did confirm that it will work with Tesla’s fart mode and Sentry Mode.

Electrek’s Take

Alright, this is not KITT. It could simply be a sound board that you control from the center display that launches those soundbites.

However, you could see how Tesla could improve on the system and develop that talking AI that Elon has mentioned in the past.

As for the specific soundbite in the video, I can see how Uber drivers could like using something like that. Maybe a preview of the Tesla Network?

What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.