- Tesla employees shared videos captured by owners’ cars on an internal messaging system, Reuters reported.
- A former Autopilot worker told Insider it was like having access to “god’s eye.”
- Tesla did not return a request for comment from Reuters or Insider.
Tesla employees peered into customers’ personal lives and garages using the suite of cameras built into owners’ vehicles, Reuters reported on Thursday.
From 2019 to 2022, some Tesla workers circulated humorous, shocking, or invasive videos on a company messaging system, nine former employees told the outlet.
Tesla did not return requests for comment from Reuters or Insider.
Former Tesla Autopilot worker John Bernal confirmed to Insider that he and some other workers were able to view personal videos from Tesla owners’ car cameras and said it was like having access to “god’s eye.”
Reuters reported that Tesla employees shared videos of car crashes, road-rage incidents, and some more embarrassing moments and that some of the content became inter-office memes. One former employee described to the publication a clip of a naked man walking up to a vehicle.
“Sometimes the only way we could get through the day was making these memes,” Bernal told Insider, adding that while he saw one car crash during his time at Tesla, most of the photos were humorous and a large portion of the memes revolved around mocking Elon Musk.
Bernal was terminated from his role at Tesla in 2022. At the time, he told CNBC that managers cited his YouTube channel, where he reviews Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software, as the cause of his termination.
“People do the weirdest things,” he told Insider, regarding the videos of Tesla owners. “I saw some people using their cars to walk their horses out in the Netherlands, like on a farm. We saw engineers screwing around with cars and homeless people trying to push shopping carts into them.”
More than a dozen employees spoke to Reuters about their experience at Tesla, the outlet said. Other former employees told Reuters they only saw images shared for legitimate work purposes. Tesla employs workers who review footage and make sure Tesla’s driver-assistance system is correctly identifying objects.
They also circulated clips from inside owners’ garages, particularly if the garage contained something notable, one source told Reuters. A few years back, some employees came across a garage with a white Lotus Espirit from a 1970s James Bond movie, Reuters said. Tesla CEO Elon Musk bought the movie prop in 2013 for around $1 million.
Bernal told Insider that while he was working at Tesla it “felt really cool” to be able to see the footage, but he covered the cameras on his own Tesla with tape at the time due to privacy concerns. While he no longer covers his cameras so he can film videos of his Tesla for his YouTube channel, Bernal said he now feels “weird” looking back about having access to customer data.
Teslas use cameras to power their driver-assistance systems like Autopilot, which follows lane lines and monitors the movement of nearby vehicles. The vehicles also come with a feature called Sentry Mode, a surveillance system that records any fishy-seeming activity near a car while it’s parked.
On its website, Tesla says its camera system is “designed from the ground up to protect your privacy.” Camera recordings are only shared with Tesla if owners opt to do so, the company says.
Read the full Reuters story here.
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