Tesla has been accused by California DMV of falsely advertising its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving features as more autonomous than they actually are, with misleading marketing claims potentially causing safety risks for drivers who may over-rely on the technology.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles filed complaints against Tesla on July 28, 2022, alleging the company made false or misleading statements about its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD) capabilities on its website. The DMV claims Tesla's marketing language, including statements that cars can 'steer, accelerate and brake automatically' and that drivers need only 'get in and tell your car where to go,' misrepresents the actual capabilities of these driver-assistance systems. Tesla's FSD feature costs $12,000 and is marketed as capable of autonomous navigation, but the vehicles still require active driver supervision at all times. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has investigated over a dozen crashes involving Tesla's Autopilot system colliding with emergency vehicles, and Tesla reported 273 accidents related to driver-assist technology from July 2021 to May 2022. A 2016 Tesla promotional video claiming to show full self-driving was later revealed by Tesla's Autopilot software director to have been staged, with the car actually crashing during filming. The Justice Department has also launched a criminal investigation into Tesla's self-driving claims following multiple crashes, some fatal, involving the Autopilot system.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI systems that inadvertently generate or spread incorrect or deceptive information, which can lead to inaccurate beliefs in users and undermine their autonomy. Humans that make decisions based on false beliefs can experience physical, emotional or material harms
Human
Due to a decision or action made by humans
Intentional
Due to an expected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed