Elon Musk red-faced after Tesla ‘robot’ gaffe practically proves it’s secretly human-operated

Elon Musk talks a big game about his “Optimus” humanoid robots, but it’s beginning to look like just another big con job. He claims these will replace many human workers within a decade, spinning a tale of an impending future in which his robots perform manual labor while the workers they replaced sit at home enjoying free money from the government.

If you believe that, then quickly take a look out of your window! I think I see a flying pig!

But hey, Musk’s Optimus robots are active during Tesla events, serving drinks, chatting with guests, and generally doing friendly robot-type things. There have long been suspicions that the “robots” are being covertly puppeteered by human operators behind the scenes, though Musk has repeatedly denied this.

Now a leaked video from Tesla’s “Autonomy Visualized” Miami event over the weekend might have blown the lid off Musk’s story. The video shows an Optimus robot bartender appearing to mime taking a VR headset off, then collapsing – almost as if a human operator had decided to take a break without properly shutting it down:

If there was any question that Optimus uses teleop for their robots. Here one clearly has a guy take the headset off and it falls over.

Absolutely hilarious though. pic.twitter.com/4gYVohjY00

— CIX 🦾 (@cixliv) December 8, 2025

Oops

It should be noted that remotely operating a humanoid robot through a VR interface is impressive in its own right. After all, technology like this would be invaluable for allowing people to be in dangerous environments without any risk to their safety. You could imagine a near-future bomb disposal unit, remote firefighters, or even SWAT teams being used in this way.

But Musk doesn’t want to sell remotely operated robots, he’s adamant that these are AI-powered autonomous robots that function without any human involvement at all. If Optimus can’t even hand out water bottles in a tightly controlled official environment with a human taking control backstage, he’s a long, long way away from realizing that.

Frankly, none of this should come as a surprise to anyone who pays attention to Musk’s claims. For years, he’s been claiming a mission to Mars is right around the corner, only for that deadline to be pushed back further and further each time.

Maybe one day he’ll achieve his dream of selling fully autonomous robots to replace humans, but if he’s having to perform cheap sideshow tricks to fool people now, he must be further away than we thought from achieving his dream.