Can Tesla's Optimus really talk? What we know

Is Tesla's new humanoid robot Optimus capable of speech? Although it appeared to be “talking” to attendees at an event on October 10, CEO Elon Musk never definitively said it would be able to do so.

Musk has discussed his vision for Optimus Gen 2 to be able to understand and follow spoken commands in the future. He mentioned that the robot should eventually be able to interpret instructions like “Pick up the screw and attach it to the car with this wrench,” suggesting that Optimus plans to process natural language.

At Tesla's recent “We, Robot” event, several Optimus models circulated in the crowd and appeared to be talking to them. Skeptics and believers took to Musk-owned X, formerly Twitter, to share their opinions about the robot's capabilities.

Tech evangelist and author Robert Scoble was at the event and shared video footage describing his meeting with Optimus. In response to @altryne's question: “Is it talking or is someone running a walkie-talkie on their speakers?” What do you think?” He replied: “Walkie Talkie.”

Newsweek I emailed Tesla for comment.

There is no confirmation that Optimus can talk or interact verbally with humans, but the intention seems to be for him to respond to verbal commands as his abilities develop. Tesla's focus was more on the robot's physical autonomy and task execution in controlled environments, such as factories.

“I feel like these are operated via telepresence, or at least the voice is definitely routed through a human on the other end while the robot performs the actions. I've seen two different videos now and it seems the robot voices are different,” said X user @AkalStation.

In response to Scoble's video, he added: “I found the answer – 1:13 timestamp in the video here. The engineer says there's 'assisted,' which seems to be another way of saying teleoperated without saying teleoperated, haha.”

Later in the event, Scoble posted: “Robot moving. @Tesla Optimus will teach you how to dance,” and shared a video of the humanoid robot dancing to LP Giobbi & Mascolo So nice to be in love.

To to move.

However, other attendees spoke about how impressed they were with Optimus.

“I never expected that I would be able to speak to @Tesla_Optimus in person today! “It was so impressive!” he said

Tesla's previous announcements seemed to have focused more on the robot's physical autonomy and task performance in controlled environments, followed by the ability to “walk the dog, mow the lawn, get groceries, just be its friend and Serving drinks,” says Tesla Musk.

Newsweek asked Musk's Grok AI chatbot, which speaks independently and without human intervention.

“From the information provided, Optimus was shown to perform tasks, but no highlighted feature of the ability to speak independently was highlighted,” Grok added. “This may indicate that while a form of voice communication exists, it was not the focus of the demonstrations, suggesting that it is either not yet fully developed or is not a priority for presentation.”