Yes.
The camera can detect traffic lights fine.
The issue is who would write the codes to make those data useful such as "red" means stop and "green" means go.
As I said before, it's quite easy and fast just to write the code for 1 single intersection but it would take a long time to do that for the entire world.
On the other hand, if you let the Artificial Intelligence get the data for foot pedal reactions (called labeling) for 1 intersection, it would take many many samples and it would take a very long time, but the advantage is you don't need as many programmers and it will work all over the world as a general solution.
There are bad labeling as well such as people who run red lights so if all labeling are bad (all people run red light) then Artificial Intelligence could duplicate that behavior as the correct codings.
Fortunately, there are less bad labelings than good ones because people who run red lights would someday get ticketed or die and thus keep the bad labelings to a minimum.
Tesla imports GPS data of all the intersections into their program so the car knows exactly where the lights, stop signs are.
The accuracy of those locations are just as good as how updated the GPS data is. If the intersection has been changed due to construction then the car cannot rely on the faulty GPS at that time, it has to rely on general solution of camera vision instead.
No argument from me here.
Driving Automation is still in its very infancy stage.
I just learn what this infant can and cannot do and babysit it with joy!
I've found the more alarms the worse for users. Users learn to ignore alarms and they might also ignore real one for danger as well.
For Traffic Control option, you can turn it off so you don't have to worry about being a volunteer labeling teaching the car when to proceed through a green light.
If you like to do labeling, you can turn it on and it's pretty seamless once you know its behavior: Whenever there's traffic light, it warns you on the display something like "Traffic Controls coming up at 600 feet" and it keeps count down waiting for your foot response. If it does not sense your foot response it would automatically slow down to a stop.
Now that I know how it behaves, I just lightly press on the accelerator until the system acknowledges that it got it and I can take my foot off. I can do all that without looking at the warning message.
It's about 600 feet far away that it would give you visual count down and waiting for your foot response.
So right now, if there's no foot response, the car would slow down to a complete stop in all colors from red to green.
If you want to run red light or any color light, just press on the accelerator.
I wouldn't describe it as "hard". It slows down to a complete stop if you don't respond to its count down from 600 feet away.
If you floor the accelerator then of course, the car would speed up real hard. Otherwise, it accelerates according to how hard you do with your foot.
Not for Traffic Controls. It only senses your foot responses.
Like you said about Tesla communications, I don't think there's any video about this beta.
Since it's beta, it can change soon (your car will stop and go on its own) so Tesla might not want to invest in something that is temporary.
Elon Musk did talk about free cost of labor for labeling from owners with this particular Traffic Controls version during the 2020 Q1 phone conference
https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/xn53wvn7
I've found Tesla's automation is very useful and very enjoyable as long as I learn what are its behaviors and how to take advantage of its strengths and weakness. That means I don't do straight pure automation all the time but a hybrid between manual and automation with different modes of TACC, Autopilot, Autopilot on Navigation...