New feature of Tesla vehicles: The voice assistant responds with “Hello”, and it might be powered by xAI’s intelligent large model?

According to the news on December 15th, a new change to Tesla vehicles has recently drawn attention: when car owners say “Hello” or “Hi” via the voice command button, the vehicle will respond with “Hello!”. Previously, Tesla vehicles usually responded to such greetings with “Command not recognized”. This change indicates that Tesla is actively developing its voice assistant function, which has been long requested by users. According to Not a Tesla App, this change seems to come from an update on Tesla’s server side, meaning that users don’t need to install the latest holiday update to experience this new feature. Tesla’s voice recognition processing is completed remotely on its servers, and the company has previously hinted that xAI’s language model Grok will eventually be applied to all Tesla vehicles.

In November last year, Elon Musk liked a post which claimed that a smaller version of the chatbot Grok would run locally on Tesla vehicles, most likely partly to provide voice assistant functions for vehicles equipped with updated hardware. In May this year, code detective greentheonly discovered that Tesla seemed to have started developing its voice assistant program and added a “wake word” activation setting in an updated internal source code. This is similar to users using “Hey Alexa” to activate Amazon’s voice assistant, while currently Tesla owners need to press a button to enable voice commands. Moreover, during the Cybercab release event on October 10th, Tesla also hinted that the Cybertruck might be equipped with a voice assistant function, and for over a year, Tesla has been making great efforts to improve its ability to understand users’ voice requests.

However, it remains unclear when exactly these features will be fully rolled out to all Tesla vehicles and become available for general use. Some industry insiders speculate that Tesla might be testing these functions in a phased manner to ensure their stability and performance before a large-scale deployment.
As for the integration of the Grok language model, there are still many technical details to be worked out. For example, how to optimize it to fit the specific in-vehicle environment and ensure seamless interaction with other vehicle systems. Additionally, concerns about data privacy and security also need to be addressed as the voice assistant will handle a significant amount of user voice data.
Nevertheless, the moves made by Tesla in the field of voice assistant development have excited many car owners and industry observers. They believe that a more intelligent and user-friendly voice assistant will greatly enhance the driving experience and make the operation of the vehicle more convenient and efficient. With the continuous progress of technology, it is expected that Tesla will bring more surprises in this regard in the future.