Bot What It Seems
In August 2021, Elon Musk’s Tesla held a flashy event announcing its plans to build a humanoid robot. The so-called Tesla Bot, a product that’s since been renamed Optimus, danced onto the stage, pulling off some awkward moves.
In reality, the EV maker wasn’t even remotely ready to show off a fully-fledged android. Instead, Tesla had sent out an actor wearing a black and white bodysuit, a cringey gaffe that had investors asking some hard questions. (Five years on, Tesla is still struggling to launch a production-ready version of the bot.)
Now, a small robotics software company — recently selected as a partner with Google DeepMind’s Robotics Program in Europe — has seemingly attempted to pull off a similar stunt.
A slick promotional video the firm posted on social media on Tuesday shows a sleek humanoid robot walking into a minimalist, wood-paneled kitchen to wash up some dishes. Its movements are astonishingly lifelike — so much so, in fact, that critics immediately started wondering whether it was a real robot moving in the physical world or some type of AI generation or other trickery.
“We train embodied models that put a robot on a real manual task and make it work, on the floor, not in a demo,” the company wrote in the caption.
The clip triggered plenty of confusion, eventually leading to Qualia founder Fabian Kerj admitting it was all an illusion.
“Is this a real collab and if so what is it?” one puzzled user tweeted.
“The humanoid is not a real robot,” Kerj responded. “We build training [infrastructure] — not hardware.”
“Got your attention tho,” he added, along with a grinning emoji.
The reaction online was harsh.
“Isn’t that, like, misleading?” a Reddit user wondered.
“I blame Elon Musk for starting this nonsense,” another user added.
The ensuing confusion and outrage appears to have come to Qualia’s attention. In a brief follow-up tweet, the company further clarified that “we are not building hardware. Yet.”
In short, it’s a questionable approach to marketing, especially considering the company doesn’t even build robots. In an industry rife with exaggerated claims and misleading demos, it’s not exactly a good look.
Futurism has reached out to both Google DeepMind and Qualia for clarification.
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