Tesla's Optimus robot with Grok shown on video. We're not impressed.
Tesla's Optimus robot now comes with xAI's AI assistant Grok, but judging from a recent video shared on X, it's not very close to fulfilling CEO Elon Musk's dream and becoming Tesla's biggest product ever.
The video, shared by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, shows the next-gen Optimus in new, gold attire, with several new visual details including more human-like hands. More importantly, Optimus now features Grok's voice mode, meaning it can understand user queries and answer them with spoken replies.
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The video, however, will hardly impress anyone, as Optimus appears slow to respond, requiring several vocal nudges to start performing a fairly simple task — going to the kitchen and fetching a Coke. The robot takes a few sluggish steps, presumably towards said kitchen, but the video ends before we can see if Optimus can actually fetch the beverage.
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The video shows some progress from earlier instances of Optimus we've seen, such as the human-assisted versions shown during Tesla's "We, Robot" event last year or the popcorn-serving robots at LA's Tesla Diner. But it's not the kind of demonstration that will make you think Tesla will be selling millions of these anytime soon.
Benioff, for one, seems to be impressed, calling it a "productivity game-changer" that will be "tackling human work for $200K–$500K." Coincidentally (or perhaps not), Benioff recently cut 4,000 customer service jobs at Salesforce, with AI agents stepping in instead.
Optimus is still in prototype stage, and we might see more iterations as it nears production, which is scheduled to start in 2026.
The demonstration comes shortly after Tesla shared the fourth instance of its Master Plan, a fairly vague document that seems to put a lot of weight on Optimus as Tesla's most important product going forward. Musk previously said that Tesla plans to sell millions of units per year within four to five years.
Topics Tesla
Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
