IN Tesla's “We, Robot” event On Thursday, CEO Elon Musk announced the upcoming 20-seat, self-driving Cybercab and Robovan robot, but the grand finale was a line of Optimus robots.
Although Musk claimed the humanoid robot was “the greatest product of any kind, ever,” new reports indicate that the futuristic robots were remotely controlled by humans — and not as autonomous as they had been made out to be.
Musk said the $20,000 to $30,000 robot could perform household tasks like mowing lawns and picking up groceries. An analyst evaluated that every family would have one in the next three years.
“Whatever you can think, it will be done,” Musk said.
Tesla's Optimus robots hit the crowd after the new Robovan reveal. It will be able to “take care of your kids, walk your dog,” said Elon Musk
BYu/Soloflow786 INrobotics
However, when an event attendee asked an Optimus robot if it was remote-controlled, the robot said, “Today, I'm being helped by a human. I'm not fully autonomous yet.”
I asked Optimus the bartender if it was remote controlled. I believe he basically confirmed it. pic.twitter.com/WlGyuswWpI
— zhen (@zhen9436) October 11, 2024
Humans appeared to be helping the Optimus robots perform tasks at the event. Electrek dotted that each robot had a Tesla employee with a signaling device nearby.
Tesla first announced plans for it venture into autonomous robots in 2021; Musk has since said that Optimus could lead Tesla to one Market capitalization $25 trillion. Tesla was in one 700 billion dollars market cap at the time of writing.
Critics wrote that the robots deserved to be called “parlor fraud” and that Tesla “defrauded millions” Who didn't know that robots were being operated by humans.
Not entirely AI? Not at all.
Totally worthy of celebrating low-latency remote control, but totally disingenuous to demonstrate these as autonomous robots—call it the parlor trick that it is. https://t.co/EdXuSO8KWA
– Josh Wolfe (@wolfejosh) October 11, 2024
Tesla scammed millions of people who watched their live broadcast of the Tesla Robotaxi event.
It wasn't until later that I watched people's videos of the event and realized that the Tesla Bots were being controlled by people.
Tesla Bot is basically like FSD (supervised). But I… pic.twitter.com/7M8Mf7wSLs
– Scary pumpkins? (@jeremyjudkins_) October 12, 2024
Related: Tesla's sales performance demand may accelerate for electric cars
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives thought the event it was “magnificent” and “historic” and was optimistic about robots. Tesla has yet to respond to reports that the AI has been remotely assisted.