• Tesla's robots, which served drinks and spoke to guests in “We Robot”, were partly controlled by humans.
• The robots' performance quickly raised doubts about their true capabilities and independence.
• Tesla plans to use the robots in its factories and sell them to both companies and consumers.

Tesla's robots may have impressed viewers at Thursday's “We Robot” event by drinking drinks, answering questions and playing rock-paper-scissors, but people quickly suspected that the performance was too good to pass up to be true.

It turns out they were right.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk proudly showed off the latest version of his Optimus robots during the event, which were last seen sorting blocks and performing yoga poses in September. Musk, who said Tesla had made advances in humanoid robots, predicted they would become “the greatest product of any kind.”

The robots entered the spotlight, closely flanked by Tesla engineers.

“One of the things we wanted to show tonight is that Optimus is not a pre-made video, it's not compartmentalized,” Musk said. “The Optimus robots will walk among you. Please be nice to the Optimus robots. So you can walk right up to them and they’ll serve drinks at the bar.”

Analysts at Morgan Stanley wrote in a note Friday that the robots did not operate completely independently and “relied on tele-ops,” or humans, to control them behind the scenes.

“Overall, we found nothing new/novel about Optimus that clearly indicated significant progress,” the analysts wrote. “Including small incremental details of the company that were previously unknown to the market.”

Videos of guests' interactions with the Optimus robots posted online underscored that humans were involved.

On

“I’m not fully autonomous yet,” the voice said, with a human-sounding stumble over the word “autonomous.”

Another video showed a guest trying to get the robot to reveal how much of it was actually AI and not human. “I can’t say how much, you’ll have to find out later,” the voice said. “I would say there could be a few. I won’t confirm it, but there could be some.”

Although some commentators thought the human assistance was “obvious,” others said Tesla's presentation was misleading.

Tesla influencer Jeremy Judkins wrote on

Josh Wolfe, co-founder of Lux Capital, also seemed to reject this.

“It's entirely worthy to celebrate low latency remote controls, but it's completely dishonest to demonstrate these as autonomous robots – call it the parlor trick,” he wrote.

Tesla did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Musk said he envisions a future in which “Optimus robots will walk among you.” Tesla's CEO expects it to become a household companion, likening it to a personal “Star Wars” R2-D2 or C3-PO that can pick up your groceries and babysit your children.

Musk, who said he was “He also said he was “pathologically optimistic” that Optimus would increase Tesla’s valuation into the trillions.

Tesla said it already has two Optimus robots in use on its factory floor, although it is unclear what tasks they perform. Tesla has announced that the humanoid robots will eventually be sold to both businesses and consumers.

Musk predicted an eventual price of $20,000 to $30,000 — “probably less than a car” — with mass production, which he said would take time.

Do you work at Tesla and have a story to tell? Contact the reporter via a work email address and device at [email protected]