Tesla Autopilot sex act: Musk courts controversy
San Francisco: Tesla CEO Elon Musk has courted fresh controversy after approving adult actor Taylor Jackson’s sex act with a man in the driver’s seat while riding an Autopilot-enabled Tesla car.
Jackson uploaded the act on adult entertainment portal pornhub and tweeted: “Holy shit, I made @Tesla the #1 search on pornhub.”
Musk, who is facing scrutiny from the US regulators over his irresponsible tweets, invited fresh controversy with his tweet.
“Turns out there’s more ways to use Autopilot than we imagined,” he replied to Jackson late on Thursday. “Shoulda seen it coming.”
His tweets sparked jokes, memes, GIFs and criticism on the micro-blogging platform.
“I love Teslas, but I honestly hope you don’t do that again. Life is a gift and it’s often too short to do risky stuff,” tweeted a user.
Porbhub also tweeted: “Reporting you (Jackson) to Elon for not having two hands on the wheel with autopilot enabled.”
All autopilot crashes so far involved human drivers willing to control the vehicle at any time and yet couldn’t stop the accidents.
A pedestrian was killed in 2018 by a self-driving Uber while the driver was watching content streaming service Hulu.
Tesla has already made it clear that its assistive autopilot technology can’t be used without driver’s input.
Tesla is also being sued by the family of Wei “Walter” Huang, a software engineer who died when his Model X with Autopilot crashed into a highway safety barrier in 2018.
On the other hand, after weeks of negotiation with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over his controversial Twitter activities, Musk has agreed to more specific oversight on his tweets about the company.
According to the settlement reached between the two parties, all tweets from Musk about Tesla’s financial health, sales or delivery numbers would have to be pre-approved by a company lawyer.
But a tweet on a sex act inside a Tesla? No clarity on that.