Tesla makes “autonomous” robots look cooler with accelerated video

Tesla released a new video early Thursday showing its much-lauded Optimus robot in action. Viewers can watch Optimus running around, handing out food and climbing stairs. But if you’re watching at home, you should pay close attention to the numbers in the top right corner of the video. Because here you will learn how quickly video editors speed up the footage to make Optimus look more impressive than it actually is.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled a long-awaited robotaxi at Warner Bros. studios last week, where the Optimus robots actually stole the show. Optimus could be seen dancing, talking to guests and even playing rock-paper-scissors. Only later did people learn that the robots were actually, at least partially, controlled by invisible people.

The entire event led to many questions about whether Musk was trying to deceive people by making them believe that Optimus had achieved such incredible feats in a relatively short development period. This sense of betrayal has likely put Musk under the obligation to show off what Optimus can really do, as in the new Tesla video posted on X overnight. But this demonstration will only raise more questions for people who see the disclaimer in the top right corner, as we see the video is two times, eight times, and in some places even ten times faster.

I navigate myself pic.twitter.com/CeFSqCcy5I

— Tesla Optimus (@Tesla_Optimus) October 17, 2024

Did you notice the little pieces of paper in the top corner? They can be difficult to notice when you try to observe the robot. But they’re a good reminder that Optimus is well behind some of Tesla’s key competitors. And it signals that Musk’s promises to deliver these robots to consumers in the near future may be overly optimistic.

What does Optimus look like in real time? We slowed down some of the footage to actual speed, as you can see in this video. And it’s okay, assuming a functioning bipedal robot. But for the average person watching at home, seeing the device running at real top speed is significantly less impressive.

The video also shows Optimus climbing stairs, which is admittedly pretty cool considering how difficult that was in the 2000s and early 2010s. Almost a decade ago, I participated in the DARPA Robotics Challenge in 2015 and there were a number of student teams that were having difficulty getting their robots to climb stairs at a reasonable speed.

But Tesla definitely outperformed the college students of 2015. At least that’s what we think Tesla did, considering that unlike the kids who competed for DARPA and had to do it in front of a live audience, Optimus just released a video without telling us if there might be more than it took one take to get it right.

You’ll also notice that the word “autonomous”, which appeared in the top corner throughout the video, has disappeared as Optimus climbs the stairs. It can be assumed that Optimus is being controlled by a human in this part of the video. Tesla did not respond to emailed questions Thursday.

The video sparked mixed reactions. Some people were very excited by what they saw, others felt cheated by the speed changes.

“Look, here too you have to speed up the video with edits, sigh. NO ONE TRUSTS YOU NOW @elonmusk,” one X user complained about the video.

Others loved the video, including tech evangelist Robert Scoble, best known for wearing Google Glass in the shower. Curiously, Scoble was the one who first pointed out that Musk’s robots at the Cybercab event were not operating autonomously.

“Ha-Ha. @elonmusk “Let’s all talk about how it’s not AI for days and then release this video,” Scoble wrote on X.

To be clear, Scoble finds the video impressive and apparently a real demonstration of AI, even though it doesn’t actually show anything innovative that can be honestly verified. But others on X, like us, were puzzled by Scoble’s wording.

“I don’t understand it, so Optimus was actually autonomous when he handed things out during the event?” “I thought the people and engineers said it was teleprompted?” another person asked Scoble.

“NO. “Most of the time it was controlled by humans,” replied Scoble. “They worked on a separate build. The one for the demo was capped to avoid errors. But now I’m wondering if more than I thought, AI was like pouring the drink.”

Tesla never contacted Gizmodo when we emailed questions about how autonomous the robots at the “We, Robot” event were. But the new video doesn’t show anyone being poured a drink. The Optimus simply hands people a bottle of drink and we still don’t know how much human interaction is involved in this process. We just have to take Tesla’s word that it is AI and “autonomous.”

Also visible in the video is the leash attached to Optimus, which is never explained and which we have circled in yellow below. The robot bartenders at the Tesla Cybercab event had no visible restraints.

Musk has long tried to make his projects look much more impressive than they actually are. Back in January, Musk tweeted a video of Optimus folding a shirt. However, the demonstration accidentally revealed that there was a person directly in front of the camera who was remotely controlling the robot. At times you could see the human’s hand entering the image, as we highlighted with the red arrow in the GIF below.

Tesla’s robotics competitors began including the words “no teleoperation” in their videos in the months after Musk’s attempt to dupe people.

Tesla’s billionaire CEO isn’t the first to manipulate robot demos either. In the 1950s, U.S. intelligence helped organize a robot demonstration for the Soviet Union during a technology fair in Moscow. The Soviet audience was told that a robot vacuum cleaner worked autonomously, and the presentation attempted to suggest that the average U.S. household would soon have such things. In reality, a man was sitting behind a two-way mirror with a remote control.

Some things never really change.