It sure seems like the Optimus robots at Tesla’s event were under human control

We didn’t learn much new from Tesla’s Robotaxi event last night, but one piece of information we were looking forward to was a little information on Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot. And we got some, but it’s maybe a little less flattering to Tesla than some might have liked.

After unveiling the Robotaxi/Cybercab and Robovan, Tesla CEO Elon Musk went on to give us a little bit of information on the Optimus humanoid robot that the company has been working on.

Musk mentioned “we started up with someone in a robot suit, and then we’ve progressed dramatically year after year” as several robots walked out in front of the crowd.

He referred to these as “your own personal R2D2 C3-PO,” and that in the long term, these robots would cost less than a car – specifically, ~$20k-$30k. A video also described them as an “autonomous assistant, humanoid friend” which could be used for basically any task you can think of.

Musk said that Optimus would be “the biggest product of any kind, ever” and figured everyone on Earth would want one or two of them, which is language he has used before (nevermind that most of the 8 billion people on Earth do not have the wealth to afford one new car, much less two). He also said that it would result in an “age of abundance” where the cost of everything would drop dramatically.

But beyond all that, Tesla took this event as an opportunity to debut Optimus in front of – and among – a live audience. Musk said:

One of the things we wanted to show tonight was that Optimus is not a canned video, it’s not walled-off. The Optimus robots will walk among you. Please be nice to the Optimus robots. So you’ll be able to walk right up to them… and they’ll serve drinks at the bar, and you’ll directly… I mean it’s a wild experience just to have humanoid robots and they’re there, just in front of you.

He then ended his speech by throwing to a group of humanoid robots dancing in a gazebo (not unlike a video made by Honda ten years ago…), and attendees were indeed able to interact with these robots in person.

Tesla’s event stream continued by showing videos of the party, including some videos of guests interacting with robots. The robots waved, handed out goodie bags, served drinks, posed for photos, walked through the crowd, and even played rock paper scissors (though, again, not as well as this robot with a 100% winrate from 12 years ago).

The robots did all have a Tesla employee “minder” watching them closely, but visibly holding some sort of signaling device in their hand. In the video, you can see one of the employees operating this device.

The official Tesla video (which had no audio, as music was playing over it) also showed a few robots serving drinks, though these were not custom mixed drinks, merely two choices of pre-mixed drinks served from beer taps. The robots seemed to do so successfully enough, though they were somewhat wobbly while serving the drinks (see here), which seemed odd – as if the robots weren’t all that great at balancing themselves, or their motions weren’t properly damped or something.

But then, attendees started posting videos from the event, and something seemed… off.

There is one widely-shared video of an employee seeming to trigger Musk’s Robotaxi departure from a phone – but that’s understandable enough, given that Waymo’s currently-operating Level 4 taxis interface with the rider’s phone to unlock the car and start a ride as well, and it makes sense from a stage management perspective of keeping the event running on cue (albeit 40+ minutes late).

But the stranger videos were of direct interactions with the Optimus robots that “walked among us” in the crowd.

It turns out the robots each had a voice and could be talked to. So, you could make a drink order, or even just have a conversation with the robots that were walking the crowd.

In conversation, the robots were impressively realistic in their conversational tone, responding quickly and with natural speech. We’ve seen some interesting developments in this respect from ChatGPT 4o, with natural intonation, but you can still tell that there’s something robotic going on there.

But perhaps they were too impressive, because these conversations certainly seem to have a human on the other side of them.

Each of the robots we’ve seen had a different voice, and a different accent – though mostly California or Texas accents, the two locations where Tesla has significant presence. One even reportedly spoke Spanish, impressing one attendee, though conversational Spanish is also not particularly uncommon in the areas where Tesla operates, so the employee behind the curtain could well just be bilingual.

This video, in particular, of a robot talking about the geography of the Bay Area, is a fun one. Not only does the robot make a very human error when it asks whether the attendee lives in the “Santa Clarita” area near San Jose (it’s Santa Clara – Santa Clarita is in Southern California, not the Bay Area), it also hears a non-standard pronunciation “Los Gatos” and then responds with a more common one.

One tech evangelist in attendance, Robert Scoble, says that he talked to an engineer at the event who told him that Optimus was running on AI while walking through the crowd, but that otherwise there was human remote assistance.

Indeed, most observers seem to think that these was some level of remote operation going on during the event. Even Adam Jonas, Morgan Stanley’s analyst who covers Tesla and is usually very bullish on everything that Tesla announces, said in a note this morning that: “It is our understanding that these robots were not operating entirely autonomously – but relied on tele-ops (human intervention) so it was more a demonstration of degrees of freedom and agility.”

The upshot of all of this is that Tesla, as is often the case, seems to be playing fast and loose with the truth.

While it may have reasonably impressive dexterity, and remote-operated robots could have some real uses (for example, putting remote-operated robots into dangerous situations where human-like limbs and manipulation would nevertheless be useful), Tesla instead decided to obscure the real information about the technology they were showcasing, suggesting that AI-driven robots would walk among the crowd when really they were relying on some amount of remote operation.

And that just leaves a bitter taste in everyone’s mouth – or at least, in the mouths of those whose information comes from somewhere other than the heavily curated twitter algorithm.

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