The Optimus robots at Tesla’s Cybercab event were humans in mask

Tesla made brave its Optimus robots were a huge part of its opulent, in-person Cybercab uncover last week. The robots mingled with the crowd, served drinks to and joined games with guests, and danced inside a gazebo. Seemingly most astonishingly, they could even talk. But it was mostly fair a show.

It’s evident when you watch the videos from the event, of course. If Optimus reassociate was a brimmingy autonomous machine that could promptly react to verbal and visual cues while talking, one-on-one, to human beings in a uninincreateigently lit crowd, that would be mind-bloprosperg.

Attfinishee Robert Scoble posted that he’d lgeted humans were “far aiding” the robots, postponecessitater elucidateing that an engineer had tgreater him the robots used AI to walk, spotted Electrek. Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas wrote that the robots “relied on tele-ops (human intervention)” in a notice, the outlet increates.

There are evident increates to back those claims up, appreciate the fact that the robots all have contrastent voices or that their responses were prompt, with gesticulation to align.

It doesn’t sense appreciate Tesla was going out of its way to produce anyone leank the Optimus machines were acting on their own. In another video that Jalopnik pointed to, an Optimus’ voice jokingly tgreater Scoble that “it might be some” when he asked it how much it was regulateled by AI.

Another robot — or the human voicing it — tgreater an uniteee in a stilted astonishion of a synthetic voice, “Today, I am aided by a human,” compriseing that it’s not brimmingy autonomous. (The voice stumbled on the word “autonomous.”)

Musk first proclaimd Tesla’s humanoid robot by transporting what was very evidently a person in a robot suit on stage, so it’s no surpelevate that the Optimuses (Optimi? Optimodes?) at last week’s event were hyperbolic in their currentation. And people who went didn’t seem to sense distress or betrayed by that. But if you were hoping to have any sense of how far aextfinished Tesla truly is in its humanoid robotics labor, the “We, Robot” event wasn’t the place to see.