Elon Musk’s Optimus Robot Collapses in a Hilariously Suspicious Way

Tesla held a special pop-up event over the weekend for Art Basel Miami Beach, the international art fair in Florida. The pop-up was dubbed “The Future of Autonomy Visualized†and reportedly featured Elon Musk’s Cybercab prototype and Optimus robots. But a video from the event is going viral for all the wrong reasons. And it’s pretty hilarious.

The video, which appears to have first been posted to r/teslamotors on Reddit, shows an Optimus robot knock over several bottles of water on a table before lifting its arms into the air. The arms move in ways that would be consistent with taking off a VR headset, and then they fall heavily, with one hitting a water on the table that seems to explode and shoot water everywhere. After that, Optimus appears to go lifeless and falls backward.

The video is just five seconds long, but it tells quite a funny story in that short burst of time.

What’s happening here? Many people online speculate that an unseen person was controlling the Optimus robot, and that person took off their headset before disconnecting. And that seems to be the most likely explanation.

This kind of robotic control is called teleoperation, and it has been in existence since at least the 1940s. Sometimes called a waldo, Walt Disney showed off how he made the 1964 New York World’s Fair attraction Carousel of Progress with a similar technology.

Disney and his engineers didn’t have VR headsets, of course, but the basic idea is the same. Someone who can’t be seen by the intended audience is manipulating controls that actually move the robot in real time.

This new viral video from Art Basel isn’t the first time Musk has been caught stretching the truth about his Optimus robot’s capabilities. Back in January 2024, Musk posted a video showing Optimus folding a shirt. Musk’s legion of fans on X celebrated the achievement, since folding laundry is both a practical application of humanoid robotics that people have been wanting for decades, as well as a maneuver that’s hard for humanoid robots to do well.

But it turned out Musk wasn’t being very transparent when he initially posted the video. Some eagle-eyed social media users started asking why we could see what appeared to be a hand coming briefly into frame in the lower-right corner. The hand seemed to match up perfectly with what Optimus was doing.

That was almost two years ago, and there have been other examples from Musk’s Optimus hype machine. For example, Musk hosted an event in Los Angeles in October 2024, announcing his Cybercab concept car that he promised was just 2-3 years away. After the event, there was a party featuring Optimus robots that were pouring beers and handing them out to guests. Guests were impressed until tech evangelist Robert Scoble started asking some questions. Scoble was told that the robots were teleoperated.

The Tesla Diner in Los Angeles has featured Optimus robots handing out popcorn, though many people have speculated that those bots are teleoperated, as well. Tesla didn’t respond to questions on Monday about whether there was someone operating Optimus at the Miami event from a remote location.

Ever since the shirt-folding video, it’s become pretty standard for people on social media to ask whether a given robot video shows real autonomy. There was even a period last year when just about every robot maker started slapping text on their videos to assure viewers their creations weren’t being teleoperated. Musk’s showmanship and sleight of hand have naturally made people suspicious.

Musk was recently asked whether a video of Optimus “learning Kung Fu†was autonomous. Musk replied, “AI, not teleoperated.†But obviously, people were skeptical given the fact that you can see a guy holding a video game controller in the background. Gizmodo couldn’t independently verify that the video shows Optimus working autonomously.

Tesla Optimus learning Kung Fu pic.twitter.com/ziEuiiKWn7

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 4, 2025

It’s particularly funny that Optimus would be teleoperated in Miami at an event called “The Future of Autonomy Visualized.†Building autonomous robots that can work without human intervention is incredibly difficult. But there are companies like Figure that are miles ahead of Tesla when it comes to this kind of autonomy.

One commenter on X poked fun at the Art Basel mishap and sarcastically commented that they weren’t worried. They insisted Musk would surely figure out how to deliver a billion robots by next year: “I’m not sure where @elonmusk is going to find enough teleoperator though, since the robotaxi’s still need an equal number of Safety Drivers… Its gunna be a rough year.â€

That’s the other thing, of course. Musk promised autonomous taxis called Robotaxi (not to be confused with the more advanced and imaginary Cybercab) would be operating by now. But the Robotaxi service that’s currently operating in Texas still has a human babysitter.

Musk hasn’t quite promised to produce a billion robots by 2026. He’s said that Tesla will be producing 1 million humanoid robots by 2030 and insists there will be a billion humanoid robots in the world by 2040. The Tesla CEO is promising quite a bit more than seems realistic for the near future, whether it’s Optimus, the Robotaxi, or the Cybercab.

Another video from the Miami event shows an Optimus robot handing out water. After the person filming grabs their water, they hand it back to Optimus. The person wants Optimus to set down the water, presumably to see it do more movements. But Optimus is initially reluctant to do so. It’s unclear why, but it might have something to do with the video that’s currently going viral. It seems likely that the operator may struggle to see below them, and setting the water back down on the table could cause them to knock things over.

Tesla’s Optimus was spotted hosting in Miami today.🥂

The interaction with guests looks incredibly smooth and natural.🤖👋 https://t.co/n85OaSa0R4 pic.twitter.com/oskYB2E7CV

— RoboHub🤖 (@XRoboHub) December 7, 2025

Even people who didn’t see Optimus fall over seemed somewhat disappointed by the event. One attendee posted that they were expecting a “deeper dive†into how Tesla Vision works, though they otherwise seemed happy.

The viral video out of Miami is also inspiring quite a few jokes on social media sites like Bluesky.

We can’t say that sci-fi movies didn’t warn us. This scene from Robocop 2 comes to mind.

Musk has bet the future of Tesla on AI and humanoid robots. And he famously promised that his robots would one day be babysitting your kids. But if we’re nearly two years out from the fake laundry-folding video and Optimus still can’t hand out a bottle of water autonomously, it makes you wonder how quickly he can deliver humanoid robots to the masses.