According to a recent report by Reuters, Tesla’s company culture allegedly promoted sharing private videos and images captured by the company’s cameras among employees for entertainment purposes. The report cited nine former employees who claimed that footage and images captured by Tesla’s eight cameras were widely shared through the company’s messaging platform between 2019 and 2022. The visuals included scenes from people’s garages, “intimate” moments, and even footage of a speeding Tesla hitting a child on a bike, which one former employee said spread “like wildfire”.
Employees with access to the camera footage were known as labellers, responsible for training Tesla’s artificial intelligence system to recognize objects and pedestrians. Sharing footage and memes made from the footage was apparently a way for employees to earn “cool points”, and those who were promoted to leadership positions often shared funny items, gaining notoriety for their humour.
Tesla’s privacy policy emphasizes that the autopilot-equipped cars were designed to protect user privacy and that the company would not share or sell personal information with third parties. However, the former employees argued that even though the purpose of Tesla’s cameras is to assist with self-driving features, the footage could potentially reveal sensitive information about the driver’s location and activities, such as street signs and landmarks, and that such footage could be misused by malicious actors.
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