Nope. This is not a joke. Elon said that Tesla is working on the cars 'soon' being able to actually speak to the driver or to people outside the car: Tesla vehicles are 'soon' going to talk, Elon Musk releases preview - Electrek
Let's not get too excited. From the teaser video, it sounds like it will part of the pedestrian warning system but instead of a random noise, it will be a pre-programmed sentence that the car will speak to pedestrians.
But this feature has a ton of potential. For example, during smart summon, the car could speak to pedestrians to let them know what it is planning to do. For FSD, this has a lot of potential. For the driver, I could see Tesla implementing responses to voice commands so that the car could reply when you ask it to do something. I could also see Tesla adding voice replies for alerts. For example, the car could speak "autopilot on" or "autopilot off" when you engage or disengage autopilot. The car could speak "hold the wheel" instead of a visual nag. The car could speak warnings like "regen low" or "low tire pressure" or "camera obstructed, autopilot features limited". Basically, all the alerts that we get now could be converted to a spoken alert. I think there would be a huge benefit in having the alerts spoken since people tend to pay better attention to something they hear, whereas they can miss a visual queue.
And ultimately, it could even lead to an AI 'personality' that can converse with us like KITT in Knight Rider. The technology exists now. Imagine just getting into your car and it talks to you about your calendar appointments or the traffic on your route and asks if you want to go to work, you say "yes" and it engages FSD and takes you to work. When Tesla finishes FSD, this would absolutely be possible.
Let's not get too excited. From the teaser video, it sounds like it will part of the pedestrian warning system but instead of a random noise, it will be a pre-programmed sentence that the car will speak to pedestrians.
But this feature has a ton of potential. For example, during smart summon, the car could speak to pedestrians to let them know what it is planning to do. For FSD, this has a lot of potential. For the driver, I could see Tesla implementing responses to voice commands so that the car could reply when you ask it to do something. I could also see Tesla adding voice replies for alerts. For example, the car could speak "autopilot on" or "autopilot off" when you engage or disengage autopilot. The car could speak "hold the wheel" instead of a visual nag. The car could speak warnings like "regen low" or "low tire pressure" or "camera obstructed, autopilot features limited". Basically, all the alerts that we get now could be converted to a spoken alert. I think there would be a huge benefit in having the alerts spoken since people tend to pay better attention to something they hear, whereas they can miss a visual queue.
And ultimately, it could even lead to an AI 'personality' that can converse with us like KITT in Knight Rider. The technology exists now. Imagine just getting into your car and it talks to you about your calendar appointments or the traffic on your route and asks if you want to go to work, you say "yes" and it engages FSD and takes you to work. When Tesla finishes FSD, this would absolutely be possible.
