Tesla Will Now Be Sending 'Short Video Clips' Collected From Your Car Back To The Company

In recent days, Tesla has rolled out a new Autopilot update along with a revamped data sharing policy, which asks drivers for access to "short video clips" from external cameras.

Drivers can opt-in to the new data sharing policy, first reported by Electrek, which asks for access to the video footage to make "self-driving a reality for you as soon as possible." The full policy was posted by a user on the Tesla Motors Club:

In order to do so, we need to collect short video clips using the car's external camera to learn how to recognize things like lane lines, street signs and traffic light positions. The more fleet learning of road conditions we are able to do, the better your Tesla's self-driving ability will become.

We want to be super clear that these short video clips are not linked to your vehicle identification number. In order to protect your privacy, we have ensured that there is no way to search our system for clips that are associated with a specific car.

It's unclear how often the video clips are being transmitted to Tesla. We reached out to the company and will update the post if we hear back. It could raise privacy concerns among some owners, but Tesla says no identifying details would be collected or shared at any point. Even though you could probably identify a hell of a lot of stuff through your ability to, you know, see whatever the car sees.

"In order for these features to work, Tesla measures the road segment data of all participating vehicles but in a way that does not identify you or your car, and may share that with partners that contribute similar data to help us provide the service," Tesla writes in the release notes.

"At no point is any personally identifiable information collected or shared during the process."

Sure. Okay. Yep.