Elon Musk has been ordered to give a deposition in a lawsuit blaming Tesla's driverless technology for a fatal crash after the carmaker suggested his public statements about autopilot could have been deepfaked.

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Edited by| Paul Mitchel

 

North America  section -  CJ journalist

 

Santa Clara County- April,27,2023 

 

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Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Evette D Pennypacker said she found Tesla's argument for why its billionaire chief executive should not testify “deeply troubling to the court”.

The company had argued that it could not vouch for the authenticity of videotaped interviews which show Mr Musk pushing its driver-assistance technology, saying it is possible some of them were digitally altered.

The judge wrote: “Their position is that because Mr Musk is famous and might be more of a target for deep fakes, his public statements are immune.

“In other words, Mr Musk, and others in his position, can simply say whatever they like in the public domain, then hide behind the potential for their recorded statements being a deep fake to avoid taking ownership of what they did actually say and do.”

Judge Pennypacker said Mr Musk can be questioned for up to three hours about certain statements he made about Tesla's assisted driving features.

His testimony would add to hundreds of hours of depositions already given by other witnesses in the case, which has been scheduled to go to trial this year.

The lawsuit was brought by the family of Walter Huang, an Apple engineer who died during his morning commute when his 2017 Model X veered into a concrete barrier on a highway about 45 minutes south of San Francisco. The family claims the Autopilot system malfunctioned and steered the car into the barrier.

Tesla came under fire from the US transport regulator for releasing information about a fatal crash involving one of its electric cars which was on ‘autopilot’ CREDIT: KTVU-TV

According to Tesla, Mr Huang's hands were not detected on the steering wheel multiple times during the 19 minutes leading up to the crash, during which its autopilot issued two visual and one audible alert for hands-off driving.

Mr Huang was playing the video game Three Kingdoms on his phone at the time of the crash, according to an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Lawyers for the Huang family have sought documents from Tesla to back up numerous public statements by Mr Musk between 2014 and 2017 about the company's progress developing self-driving technology.

Some of those statements have been cited in recent consumer lawsuits accusing Tesla of failing to deliver on Mr Musk's longstanding promise to produce a fully self-driving car.

The family's lawyers have argued that Tesla has failed to adequately respond to their demands for information during the pretrial discovery process and asked the judge to sanction the company.

 

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