Recorded, definitely based on the fact that Tesla employees were sharing various "funny" clips from these cams among themselves.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sens...

I thought the Chinese were being paranoid about Tesla but really anything from the US can be used to spy on your military bases.

Teslas, Roombas and Rings...

https://cybershow.uk/episodes.php?id=12

Recorded, yes. Tesla uses the fleet to collect video data for training their algorithms. This has been shared in multiple presentations from Tesla.

Tesla owners can use the cameras as "dashcams" and save the recordings. Here's an example from r/dashcam: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dashcam/comments/15ezdjd/tesla_dash...