Elon Musk Issues Clarification After Video Of Tesla Robot Goes Viral

Elon Musk regularly shares intriguing content on his X (formerly Twitter) account, ranging from memes to updates on products his companies are developing. Now, recently the billionaire shared a video of Tesla's Optimus robot expertly folding a t-shirt. The clip shows the humanoid smoothly pulling a T-shirt from a basket and folding it with both hands, mimicking human actions. However, as the video started to gain traction online, Mr Musk was forced to issue a clarification saying that Optimus can't do this on its own yet but certainly will be able to do this in future.

"Optimus folds a shirt," Mr Musk wrote on X while sharing the clip of the robot. However, Mr Musk, in a follow-up post, clarified that the robot cannot yet do this autonomously. "Important note: Optimus cannot yet do this autonomously, but certainly will be able to do this fully autonomously and in an arbitrary environment (won't require a fixed table with box that has only one shirt)," the billionaire wrote. 

Take a look below: 

Important note: Optimus cannot yet do this autonomously, but certainly will be able to do this fully autonomously and in an arbitrary environment (won't require a fixed table with box that has only one shirt)

Mr Musk shared the clip on Tuesday and since then it amassed more than 68 million views. Notable tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee even asked Mr Musk about the video's authenticity. "This is a video, not CG?" Mr Brownlee asked. Some eagle-eyed X users also raised suspicions about remote operation rather than true autonomy as they pointed out that they could see a gloved hand in the video's periphery. 

"So, explain why there seems to be a shadow hand at the bottom right that seems to control Optimus movement ?" wrote one user. "'Hand' in lower right at edge of screen comes in/out of frame echoing movements," noted another. 

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"My mom would've already taken its place and said: Too slow, I'll do it. I always have to do everything around here," jokingly commented a third user. "this is impressive but there's definitely someone in a body suit controlling its movements, not end to end neural nets on this demo," added another. 

Notably, Optimus robot is part of Tesla's AI and robotics division and uses an AI-first approach. The company says that, with the help of inference hardware, this is the only way to make fully self-driving, bipedal robots. Optimus Gen 2 is the newest Tesla robot, and it's the successor to Optimus Gen 1, which was unveiled in March 2022.