Tesla will launch a car infotainment voice assistant integrated with DeepSeek and Tofu AI models in China.

Tesla plans to launch a vehicle voice assistant feature in the Chinese market, incorporating the DeepSeek and Douyin artificial intelligence models from ByteDance, in order to catch up with local competitors offering similar functions. According to documents uploaded on Tesla's official website, this technology allows drivers to use voice commands to control navigation, media playback, temperature control, and access news and information. The documents indicate that the voice command feature will be mainly handled by "Douyin," while "DeepSeek" will be responsible for AI interactions. The documents state that both large voice models are hosted on ByteDance's Volcano Engine cloud service platform. The cars sold by Tesla in the US use the Grok model chatbot, developed by the AI startup xAI founded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Data for the first seven months of this year show that the shipment volume from Tesla's Shanghai factory decreased in six out of those months, with a 8.4% drop in deliveries in July compared to the same period last year. It is currently unclear whether these AI models have been integrated into Tesla models sold in China. Several car owners contacted by Bloomberg have stated that they have not received notification of the new service terms document. The latest OTA update date listed on Tesla's official WeChat application is August 18th. Representatives from Tesla and ByteDance did not immediately respond to requests for comment.