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Tesla Autopilot “prank” by YouTuber is a big face palm

(Credit: Lucas and Marcus/YouTube)

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Teslas are unique vehicles with their own unique capabilities. It is then no surprise to see YouTube and social media platforms be riddled with their own fair share of Tesla-themed prank videos. While most of these pranks tend to be harmless, silly fun (unexpected Ludicrous launches come to mind), some end up being more on the annoying and dangerous side. A recent prank from noted entertainment YouTubers Lucas and Marcus Dobre falls on the latter.

The twin YouTubers, whose channel boasts an impressive following of 19.2 million subscribers and over 4.8 billion views, recently opted to conduct one of their trademark pranks on their friends and family. This time around, the twins opted to conduct a Tesla Autopilot-themed prank, engaging the driver-assist system and then pretending to fall asleep at the wheel. The Dobre twins pulled the joke on several individuals, from their older brother to a member of their production team.

A look at the Autopilot prank video shows that the entire episode was on-brand for Lucas and Marcus Dobre, whose online fame was built on relatively wholesome fun that includes dance routines, pranks, and gymnastics exhibitions. Yet, behind the humor of the recent video lies something far more serious: inasmuch as the reactions of the unwitting victims were amusing, the fact remains that Autopilot was not appropriately used during the entire segment at all.

At the beginning of the video, for example, the Dobre twins proved quite liberal in dubbing the Tesla Model X with Autopilot as a self-driving car. This is not the case, as Tesla’s actual autonomous driving solutions, which allow drivers to take their hands off the wheel entirely while the vehicle is in motion, is not yet rolled out to consumers. Basic Autopilot, which was used by the twins, is also a hands-on system, but this was ignored for the most part during the entire video.

Teslas are arguably the most fun vehicles on the market today, but the company has also been working incredibly hard to ensure that its cars are among the safest on the road. Autopilot is among the company’s key safety features as it provides owners with an additional set of eyes on the road, but it also requires responsible usage. Pretending to be sleeping while Autopilot maneuvers around city streets is not an example of responsible behavior.

YouTubers with massive followings such as at the Dobre twins are best advised to be more careful and aware of the risks involved in misusing Autopilot. The twins’ older brother, Darius, who was a victim of the prank, even remarked that they have invested in TSLA stock. As such, one can only assume that Lucas and Marcus opted to perform the prank despite knowing full well what Autopilot’s capabilities really are, and what the system is really intended for in its current iteration. Hopefully, the Dobre twins’ next Tesla-themed pranks will be a lot more responsible. Those unexpected Ludicrous launch pranks never get old, after all.

Watch the Dobre twins’ Autopilot prank in the video below.

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Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

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Tesla unlocks in-car web conferencing to extend Google Meet, Teams and beyond

Tesla’s Summer Update lets owners join Google Meet, Teams, and Discord calls via cabin camera.

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Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update, which just began rolling out to customer vehicles, now links the built-in web browser with the in-cabin camera feed and microphone input, thereby letting owners join video calls on nearly any browser-based service instead of just Zoom.

The change appears in Tesla’s own release notes for software version 2026.26 under “Web Browser,” which states that the vehicle can now use its interior camera and cabin microphone when a website requests access, with permission granted the same way a desktop browser handles it. As NotATeslaApp notes, this feature opens the door to Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Discord, and other webcam-enabled sites to activate the in-car cabin-facing camera. The feed automatically crops and zooms to center the driver in frame.

Tesla has offered in-car video calling before, but only through a dedicated Zoom app that launched at the end of 2022, a stripped-down browser preloaded with Zoom’s own web client and gated behind Premium Connectivity. Opening the full browser to any camera-requesting site removes that walled garden. Elon Musk first called video conferencing “definitely a future feature” back in 2020, when the pandemic pushed remote meetings into daily life, so this update effectively finishes something Tesla has been promising for six years.

Tesla Summer Update begins rolling out: a look at the new features

The feature keeps the same restrictions that applied to Zoom on Tesla vehicles. It only works while the car is parked; shifting into Drive disables the camera feed, according to the release notes. It is also limited to vehicles running Tesla’s AMD Ryzen infotainment hardware, meaning older Intel-based Model S and Model X units, along with early Model 3 and Model Y builds, don’t get it.

Turning the browser into a general entry point for the in-cabin camera, rather than routing everything through one local app, widens the number of third-party sites that can ask for access, even though Tesla’s permission prompt.

With the Summer update only days into its rollout, be sure to stay with us on TikTok and X to see the latest video demonstrations.

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Elon Musk’s answer to Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey got way more specific

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Elon Musk escalated his monthslong feud with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this week, pledging that his own AI video tool will produce a competing version before the year is out. Responding to a fan-made, AI-generated clip of the ancient epic, Musk wrote on X, “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”

In June, Musk quoted an xAI-shared trailer built entirely with Grok Imagine Video 1.5, a two-minute-plus reimagining of The Odyssey styled after a 1970s classical Hollywood epic, and predicted “full movies by the end of the year,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That trailer, built from 36 consistent shots by a single creator, was Musk’s proof of concept. This week’s pledge turns that prediction into a specific commitment, tied directly to Homer’s text rather than a generic demo.


When a fan separately proposed that Musk fund a live-action alternative, to “give Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek,” Musk replied with two words: “I’m down.”

The Grok Imagine pledge lands as the tool’s underlying infrastructure has changed hands. Grok is no longer a standalone product, it folded into SpaceXAI after SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI closed in February, meaning the compute behind any Odyssey production traces back to the same Colossus supercomputers now bundled into SpaceX’s pitch to investors. Musk has separately said SpaceX’s own engineering data is being fed into the next major Grok training run, a two trillion parameter model he’s called the “2T run.”

Whether Grok Imagine can sustain a feature length narrative, rather than a series of impressive individual shots, remains the open question.

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Tesla Mobile App gets a new feature that wrap fans are going to love

Tesla’s Summer Update removes the USB drive step from customizing your car’s digital wrap design.

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Tesla’s latest 2026 Summer Update quietly closes out one of the more tedious steps in personalizing a Tesla’s digital appearance. Uploading a custom wrap design used to require a USB drive. Now it doesn’t.

The feature is listed in Tesla’s release notes as “Send Custom Wraps from Mobile App.” The company described it plainly: “Skip the USB drive and upload a custom wrap of your car from the mobile app. Instructions for creating a custom wrap here: github.com/teslamotors/custom-wraps.”

The digital wrap tool has been around since Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, when it launched for Cybertruck owners first, as Teslarati reported at the time. Getting a design onto the car meant formatting a USB drive, creating a folder named exactly “Wraps,” dropping in PNG files sized between 512×512 and 1024×1024 pixels and under 1 MB each, then plugging the drive in and applying the wrap through Toybox. Tesla expanded the tool to other models and renamed it from “Colorizer” to “Paint Shop” with the 2025 Holiday Update, while also adding license plate and window tint customization alongside the wraps.

The latest Summer Update removes the USB step from that process. Owners will be able to pull a design from wherever they saved it, whether that’s a download from social media or something built from Tesla’s own GitHub templates, and push it to the car directly through the app.

Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more

It’s a small fix relative to the rest of this latest release, which also included expanded Grok voice commands, automatic navigation that learns regular routes, and self-driving stats inside the mobile app, all detailed in our rundown of the full Summer Update. The USB requirement was one of the more common complaints about Paint Shop since it launched. Tesla did not say when the wrap upload change would reach individual vehicles, only that the broader update is rolling out now in waves.

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