Tesla Optimus robots at ‘human-assisted’ event

The Tesla Optimus robots shown at the We, Robot event were “helped by a human.” Various sources indicate that the humanoid robots were at least partially controlled by humans. Tesla has not confirmed this publicly so far.

The Optimus robots used by Tesla during the event on October 11 showed, he could dance, serve drinks and talk to visitors, among other things. Technical author and blogger Robert Scoble says shortly after the incident he drove off from Teslaan engineer learned that Optimus was partially assisted by humans, but that the walk was based on AI, so Electrek noted.

Optimus give me a drink, please.

This is not completely AI. Someone is really supportive.

Which means AI day next year where we can see how fast Optimus is learning. pic.twitter.com/CE2bEA2uQD

— Robert Scoble (@Scoileadair) 11 October 2024

Since then, several videos from attendees of the event have emerged that seem to confirm this. Another visitor for example, video sharing in which the Optimus server is specifically asked if it is remotely controlled. The robot admits: “At the moment I am assisted by a person. I am not yet fully autonomous”, and the human driver seems to miss the word ‘independent’.

Marques Brownlee shares a similar video showing Optimus’ super advanced speech abilities. From the video it can be seen that the robot responds very quickly and uses a human voice. The robots may have been assisted remotely. The security guards of the devices were also seen with a remote control, but it is not clear why these boxes were used.

Tesla has never publicly confirmed or denied that the robots were controlled by humans. The company also didn’t clearly claim that Optimus was fully powered by AI. The live stream of the event also started with a broad disclaimer. It’s unclear how much AI is used for the tech demo. Tesla did not respond to questions from Tweakers before this article was published.

Optimus Gen 2. Source: Tesla