(Thomas Fuller/Getty Images)

Tesla moved its “robotaxi” to the Bay Area and put a driver in the driver’s seat

Tesla doesn’t need a permit to have a human drive you around with supervised full self-driving.

7/31/25 12:15PM

Tesla’s overhype machine continues to turn out the hits.

Earlier this month, when asked about Tesla’s autonomous ride service, CEO Elon Musk said the company’s limited Austin robotaxi service would be expanding to the Bay Area, pending regulatory approvals. Tesla doesn’t have those permits yet and correspondence between the company and California’s autonomous DMV branch viewed by Politico never use the word “robotaxi.” Tesla and Musk have made an announcement, nonetheless.

Today Musk said, “You can now ride-hail a Tesla in the SF Bay Area, in addition to Austin.” Pay attention to the language. People can now use Tesla’s Robotaxi app to ride-hail a Tesla. That Tesla will have a person in the driver’s seat touching the steering wheel. In other words, you can pay for a person to drive you around in a Tesla, using the company’s supervised full self-driving software, which requires a driver to be in the seat, notably, and hold the wheel. That’s a far cry from true autonomous driving and something that basically already exists if you were to get in an Uber or a consumer’s Tesla that has enabled supervised full self-driving in the state.

Below is a video posted yesterday from Tesla influencer Teslaconomics. Using the Robotaxi app, he summoned a Tesla with a driver in the driver’s seat. You’ll see the driver’s hands remain hovering on or near the steering wheel the whole time. It doesn’t have Robotaxi signage.

My first Tesla Robotaxi ride in the Bay Area, CA! 🔥 https://t.co/arZykKfNbZ
— Teslaconomics (@Teslaconomics) July 31, 2025

Also, the “you” who can now ride-hail in this case seems to mean friends and family of Tesla employees, or invited members of the public. The automaker’s Austin service was similarly not fully open to all potential customers. The Austin service was also not fully autonomous driving. Under the program Tesla operates there, a safety monitor who can stop the vehicle sits in the front passenger seat for every ride, and tele-operators can take over remotely.

Jon Keegan36m

OpenAI’s hot Sora video app is a copyright lawsuit waiting to happen

OpenAI has generated some serious buzz surrounding its new Sora video generation app. The app is currently No. 3 on the iOS free app leaderboards, even though it’s invitation only for the time being.

But users have been flooding social media with videos generated by Sora, and in addition to a Skibidi toilet Sam Altman, and the OpenAI CEO dressed as a Nazi, the app is cable to create videos featuring iconic characters from Disney, Nintendo, and Paramount Skydance.

On the system card for the Sora 2 AI model (which powers the Sora app), OpenAI says it was trained on things found on the internet:

“Sora 2 was trained on diverse datasets, including information that is publicly available on the internet, information that we partner with third parties to access, and information that our users or human trainers and researchers provide or generate.”

This seems like an invitation for a big copyright lawsuit, along the lines of the one Disney, Dreamworks, and NBCUniversal recently filed against AI image generator Midjourney.

But OpenAI is trying to flip the responsibility of protecting copyrighted material to the intellectual property owners themselves. According to WSJ, OpenAI is allowing copyrighted material in Sora by default, unless copyright holders opt-out of the service.

The courts will have to decide if this novel approach to intellectual copyright law works, but government regulators may not be that big of a problem, as Sam Altman has made sure OpenAI is in the good graces of the Trump administration. If OpenAI has to pay up to copyright holders after a lawsuit, what’s a few billion dollars here or there when you are raising so much capital?

OpenAI’s AI video app stirs copyright questions, pumping out videos of Mario and Pikachu

On the system card for the Sora 2 AI model (which powers the Sora app), OpenAI says it was trained on things found on the internet:

“Sora 2 was trained on diverse datasets, including information that is publicly available on the internet, information that we partner with third parties to access, and information that our users or human trainers and researchers provide or generate.”

This seems like an invitation for a big copyright lawsuit, along the lines of the one Disney, Dreamworks, and NBCUniversal recently filed against AI image generator Midjourney.

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