Is Tesla’s new Optimus humanoid robot capable of speech? Although it appeared to be “talking” to attendees at an event on October 10, CEO Elon Musk has never definitively said it can do so.
Musk has discussed his vision for Optimus Gen 2 to be capable of understanding and following spoken commands in the future. He mentioned that the robot should eventually be able to interpret instructions like “pick up that bolt, attach it to the car with that wrench,” indicating plans for Optimus to process natural language.
At Tesla’s recent We, Robot event, several Optimus models were circulating among the crowd and appeared to be talking to them. Skeptics and believers took to Musk-owned X, formerly Twitter, to share their opinions on the robot’s abilities.
Tech evangelist and author Robert Scoble was at the event and shared video footage in which he described meeting Optimus. In reply to @altryne asking him, “Does it talk or is someone walkie talkie through its speakers? What do you think?” he replied, “Walkie Talkie.”
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Newsweek reached out to Tesla via email for comment.
There is no confirmation that Optimus can speak or verbally interact with humans, but the intention seems to be for it to respond to verbal commands as its capabilities evolve. Tesla’s focus has been more on the robot’s physical autonomy and task execution within controlled environments, such as factories.
“I feel like these may be operated via telepresence, or at least the voice is definitely being piped through a human on the other end while the robot does the actions. I’ve seen two different videos now and it appears the robot voices are different,” X user @AkalStation said.
In reply to Scoble’s video he added, “Found the answer – 1:13 timestamp on the video here. Engineer says there are ‘assisted’ which seems like another way to say teleoperated without saying teleoperated haha.”
Later on at the event, Scoble posted, “Robot moves. @Tesla Optimus will teach you to dance,” sharing a video of the humanoid robot dancing to LP Giobbi & Mascolo’s So Nice to Be in Love.
X user @protosphinx replied to Scoble, “looks like a tele bot tho,” to which he replied, “It is.” It’s not clear if he is talking about the robot’s ability to speak and/or move independently of human intervention.
Other attendees, however, talked about how impressed they were with Optimus.
“Never expected I could speak with @Tesla_Optimus in person today! It was so impressive!” said X user @affinity892, who shared a video of Optimus serving him a drink while appearing to ask him “how is your night so far?”
Tesla’s previous announcements seem to have focused more on the robot’s physical autonomy and task execution within controlled environments, followed by eventually being able to “walk your dog, mow your lawn, get the groceries, just be your friend, serve drinks,” according to Musk.
Newsweek asked Musk’s Grok AI chatbot, which scours X for information, if Optimus can “talk independently of human intervention” and it said: “Based on the available information up to October 11, 2024, there is no explicit confirmation that the Tesla Optimus robot can talk independently without human intervention.”
“From the information provided, Optimus has been shown performing tasks but there hasn’t been a highlighted feature on independent speech capability,” Grok added. “This might indicate that while it might have some form of vocal communication, it hasn’t been a focal point of demonstrations, suggesting either it’s not fully developed or not a priority for showcase.”
