Tesla was caught using a lazy video editing trick to make its “autonomous” robots look more capable

Tesla’s Distortion of Reality

Tesla released an eye-catching video of its humanoid robot Optimus in action, showing it wandering the halls of the company’s factory, picking up boxes, climbing stairs and serving drinks to visitors at a bar.

But there’s one detail about the video you might have missed: as seen by Gizmodomuch of the footage has been sped up considerably, presumably to make the robot appear more capable than it actually is.

To be fair, Tesla wasn’t exactly trying to hide his editing trick: an easily missed text box in the top right corner reveals that the footage was sped up from two to ten times normal speed.

But given the fact that the company was recently caught employing human actors to make it look like its robots are capable of speaking autonomously at its “We, Robot” event last week, the sped-up footage highlights just how far behind Tesla is behind its steep humanoid robotics competition.

https://twitter.com/Tesla_Optimus/status/1846797392521167223

Pretending progress

Naturally, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has set some extremely ambitious goals, promising in a July tweet that Optimus will enter “low production for Tesla’s internal use next year and hopefully high production for other companies in 2026.”

But whether it will be ready within that short timeframe is still unclear at best.

If you want to see how long it takes Optimus to lift a tray of battery cells, GizmodoMatt Novak helped slow down the footage to real time in a YouTube video.

A separate part of the video shows the robot’s long tether, which likely provides power. In other words, the supposedly “autonomous” robot still needs to be plugged in, at least while serving some drinks to the factory’s thirsty visitors.

In January, Tesla was also arrested for faking a video showing the company’s next-generation humanoid robot Optimus meticulously folding a shirt on a table.

As Musk himself later admitted, the robot was teleoperated by a nearby human.

“Important note: Optimus cannot do this autonomously yet, but it will certainly be able to do it fully autonomously and in an arbitrary environment,” Musk tweeted at the time.

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