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Electric vehicle maker Tesla is poised to expand its controversial FSD Beta program with a long-awaited download button that would allow customers to get new, unfinished versions of the company’s driver assistance software to test on public roads even though that software hasn’t been debugged yet.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who called a previous version of FSD Beta software “not great,” cautioned Friday evening that FSD Beta now seems so good it can give drivers a false sense of security that they don’t need to pay attention to driving while FSD Beta is engaged, even though they do have to remain attentive and at the wheel.

Tesla and CEO Musk didn’t immediately respond to CNBC for comment.

Tesla markets its driver assistance systems in a standard package called Autopilot, and a premium package called FSD, short for Full Self-Driving in the U.S. Neither of these systems make Tesla’s cars autonomous, according to the company’s users’ manuals and website.

Musk has been promising his fans an FSD Beta button for at least six months. On March 9, 2021, he wrote: “Build 8.3 of FSD should be done QA testing by end of next week, so that’s roughly when download button should show up.”

The CEO also revealed Thursday that Tesla will require owners who use the forthcoming Beta button to prove they are good drivers first, before getting access to their FSD Beta download.

Musk wrote: “Beta button will request permission to assess driving behavior using Tesla insurance calculator. If driving behavior is good for 7 days, beta access will be granted.” (The company began selling insurance in its home state of California in August 2019.)

Tesla board member, Hiromichi Mizuno, shared Musk’s announcement and touted the company’s approach, writing on Friday: “You must be a good driver not to drive, which may become a new norm.”

Musk replied to Mizuno Friday night:

“Ironically, yes at this time. FSD beta system at times can seem so good that vigilance isn’t necessary, but it is. Also, any beta user who isn’t super careful will get booted.2000 beta users operating for almost a year with no accidents. Needs to stay that way.”

Musk’s tweet contradicts facts about the FSD Beta program conveyed in the California Department of Motor Vehicles Autonomous Vehicles Branch memo written in March 2021.

The DMV’s Autonomous Vehicles Branch Chief Miguel Acosta, who wrote the memo, spoke with Tesla employees on that date, including associate general counsel Eric Williams and Autopilot software director CJ Moore.

Acosta wrote that they informed him the FSD Beta program as of March 9, 2021, included 753 Tesla employees and 71 non-employees — less than half of the 2,000 FSD Beta users Musk alluded to in his tweet on Friday.

CNBC directly obtained the memo and other correspondence between Tesla and the California DMV, which were published earlier by Plainsite, a legal transparency website.

In their correspondence, Tesla characterized even their newest FSD Beta features as a Level 2 driver assistance system, rather than fully driverless technology.

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Gaming billionaire: Prepare for AI to ‘completely disrupt everything’ across the industry

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Gaming billionaire: Prepare for AI to 'completely disrupt everything' across the industry

Min-Liang Tan speaks during a conference at SXSW Sydney on October 16, 2024 in Sydney, Australia.

Nina Franova | Getty Images

Artificial intelligence is set to have a huge impact on the gaming industry and its billions of players, according to Min-Liang Tan, the billionaire CEO and co-founder of gaming firm Razer.

From the ways in which games are developed to hacks for completing levels, Tan said the technology’s ramifications across the sector can’t be overstated.

“For us at Razer, the way we see it is that AI is going to completely disrupt everything, or change everything in gaming,” Tan told CNBC’s “Beyond the Valley” podcast.

Gaming plays a significant role in the creative sector, with 3.6 billion players around the world and annual revenue of nearly $189 billion, according to research company Newzoo, which tracks data across mobile, console and PC games.

Razer changed gaming with its hardware. Now it’s hoping to do the same with AI

“Game developers will now be able to use AI tools, and then you’ve got game publishers that will now distribute, market new games with AI tools … For gamers, the AI tools will be able to change things, in terms of the way they play,” Tan told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal at Singapore’s SWITCH conference.

Razer, known for its gaming gear like mice, headsets and keyboards, has developed Game Co-AI, a tool that uses computer vision to “watch” how a gamer plays and provides tips on solving quests or defeating enemies. The tool will also use data such as public APIs, and a beta version of Game Co-AI will be available “later in 2025,” according to Razer’s website.

The potential use of AI in esports — or competitive gaming — has sparked debate, however.

“We will not have AI running, I think, during a game itself, but what about at the point of time of training?” Tan said. There is an appetite among some esports players to use AI to help coach future stars, Tan said. “There’s a lot of excitement in respect of this. The opportunities are limitless.”

Along with helping players, AI will also be able to detect and fix bugs when games are developed, according to Tan.

Traditionally, game testing involved “a whole bunch of people sitting in a room,” playing games and identifying bugs one by one, Tan said, in a process known as quality assurance or QA. Razer is developing an AI QA Companion, which can find and log bugs — and will soon also be able to suggest bug fixes, he added.

“[QA] is about 20% to 30% of the [development] costs, it takes up about 30% of the time,” Tan said, adding that the new tool will automate the QA process, making human testers more effective and productive.

AI-created games?

The effects of AI are being felt across industries, but there is still some disagreement on how far AI can go in gaming.

Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of video game publisher Take-Two Interactive, which makes Grand Theft Auto, said on Tuesday that AI can’t rival human game developers.

When asked for his gaming predictions for a year’s time, however, Tan said: “I think we will be talking about some of the new, exciting games that have been built with AI, and how we see the future from that. Maybe we might see one or two major hit games.”

Developing a game usually involves large teams and significant investment, but AI will allow smaller groups of people to do so, according to Tan. Rather than being a threat to jobs, AI can remove “tedious” tasks, he added. “The human creativity still needs to be there.”

The way in which the gaming industry uses AI may have a wider impact beyond the sector, Tan said, suggesting that it could “spawn multiple other new industries.”

“A lot of what’s happening in the tech industry was born from gaming, and I believe that a lot of what will happen for AI will also be born from AI gaming,” he said.

Razer was founded by Tan and Robert Krakoff in 2005, and the company became known for the Boomslang, a mouse — named after a deadly snake — designed specifically for gaming. “For a gamer, the mouse is everything. It’s an extension of your arm,” Tan said. “The more precise your mouse is, the more likely you are going to be able to get frags,” he said, referring to the “kills” made in first-person shooter games.

Headquartered in Singapore and Irvine, California, Tan said the company went global “very quickly” after it launched. Razer went public in 2017, listing on the Hong Kong stock exchange, before going private again in 2022.

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Musk teases Tesla Roadster demo by year-end. He’s been hyping a new one since 2017

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Musk teases Tesla Roadster demo by year-end. He's been hyping a new one since 2017

Toyota Motor Corp President Akio Toyoda gets out of a Tesla Motor’s Roadster electric car with Tesla Motors Chief Exective Officer Elon Musk (behind car) upon their arrival at a news conference in Tokyo November 12, 2010.

Issei Kato | Reuters

Eight years ago, Tesla CEO Elon Musk promoted a next-generation Roadster, basing the name of the sports car on the company’s debut electric vehicle from 2008.

The updated version has yet to hit production. But Musk is again promising that a new one is on the way.

In a discussion with podcaster Joe Rogan that was published on Friday, Musk was asked about the long-delayed vehicle. He provided a sense of timing but declined to share updated technical or design details.

“I can’t do the unveil before the unveil,” Musk said. As he’s said before, Musk claimed the new Roadster “has a shot at being the most memorable product unveil ever.”

Tesla is aiming to show off the updated Roadster to fans and investors “hopefully before the end of the year,” Musk said.

Musk’s comments come a day after former close friend Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, posted on X that he tried to cancel his Roadster reservation from 2018 and get his deposit refunded. He shared a screenshot showing that his email to the company had bounced back.

“I really was excited for the car!” Altman wrote. “And I understand delays. But 7.5 years has felt like a long time to wait.”

Musk, who helped start OpenAI in 2015, is in a heated legal dispute with Altman and now runs competing artificial intelligence startup xAI.

Patrick George, editor-in-chief at InsideEVs and a long-time industry observer, told CNBC on Friday that the Roadster “has been MIA for years.”

“The only thing I can think of that would make Musk start talking about this again is that Sam Altman at OpenAI, who is sort of his arch-rival, just said recently that he was trying to cancel his Roadster reservation which he has held since 2018,” George said.

Earlier this year, the popular gadget and autos reviewer Marques Brownlee discussed the arduous process of cancelling his own Roadster reservation in an interview with Waveform Podcast.

The Roadster is a high end, low-volume model, something meant to challenge vehicles like BYD’s YangWang U9 Xtreme, which was recently crowned the world’s fastest production car.

Musk faces a major Tesla shareholder vote next week, as he and the board are asking investors to approve a massive pay package.

The pay plan would net Musk nearly $1 trillion in Tesla stock and would grow his stake to around 25%, depending on the company hitting various market valuations and other growth milestones.

WATCH: CNBC’s interview with Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm

Tesla Board Chair Robyn Denholm: The technology of AI is truly transformative

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Don’t own any Apple? Gear up to buy some if the stock keeps falling

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Don’t own any Apple? Gear up to buy some if the stock keeps falling

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