Tesla Looks to Enhance Grok AI as It Battles California Regulators
Vocally controlling your Tesla while parking is “coming,” and Tesla is also suing the California DMV.
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Like seemingly every other automaker on the planet, Tesla is rushing to add AI capability to its cars, and not surprisingly, it’s doing so through the use of the Grok AI chatbot from Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s xAI venture. Over the past several months, Tesla has been pushing ever more Grok features and capabilities into its cars, allowing owners to ask it natural language questions. And soon, Musk says, it looks as though Grok will start doing even smarter things than telling you where the best food is near you.
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Meanwhile, Tesla’s also been busy filing suit against California in an ongoing battle with the state and its Department of Motor Vehicles surrounding the naming and capabilities of its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving autonomous systems.
After Tesla Removes Autopilot, It Sues the California DMV
You may have noticed that Autopilot hasn’t been seen on Tesla’s consumer website recently. That’s because it was removed as part of the changes the California DMV required around what it said were effectively false claims Tesla was making about its automated driving systems. Tesla also subsequently changed the name “Full Self-Driving” to “Full Self-Driving (Supervised)” (a system we’ve found so good that we awarded it with a MotorTrend Best Tech honor) as a result. These changes avoided a potential 30-day sales and manufacturing suspension.
But according to a report by CNBC, that hasn’t been enough in the eyes of Tesla; it has filed suit against the state vehicle regulatory body for finding that it engaged in false advertising. Tesla is now claiming that the state wrongfully named it as a false advertiser, even after it agreed to make the changes the state required. For its part, Tesla continues to stress that it posts numerous disclaimers for its owners about the capabilities of its systems and driver responsibilities. It has also begun offering Full Self-Driving (Supervised) as a pay-to-play subscription.
The timing of the legal filing also comes just a week or so after Tesla announced that its fully autonomous Cybercab is entering into production. Any hint that Tesla isn’t being clear and upfront about what its vehicles are capable of from an autonomous driving standpoint could potentially tarnish the Cybercab rollout, not to mention the development of Full Self-Driving, a system that Musk continues to promote heavily as being very close to, well, full self-driving.
Musk Promises Natural Voice Control Via Grok
As for Grok, with the latest update to Teslas over the 2025 holiday, its voice control has been enhanced, allowing you to ask Grok through natural language commands to add waypoints or destinations or reroute trips without having to go through several menus. But when you wanted to park at your destination, the choice was left to Tesla’s self-parking system. According to Musk on X, soon you’ll have more verbal control over Tesla’s automated parking features using Grok, simply saying on X that the feature is “Coming.”
As with so many of the pronouncements by Musk regarding new Teslas and Tesla features, the “when” and the “how” have yet to be fleshed out, but it’s probably a good bet that we’ll see it with the next major software update. When it does drop, it could offer a far better experience beyond what Tesla’s Park at Destination can do right now by allowing an owner to tell Grok to park their Tesla exactly where they want it to go. And let’s hope that Grok is smart enough to make sure it doesn’t accidentally drive the car into a wall.
