On the Internet you can find pictures of an American billionaire sitting in a restaurant in the company of a mechanical companion. We decided to check whether such an unusual date actually happened.
Photos of Musk's high-tech rendezvous were published at different times informational And entertaining portals, Telegram channels and social network users (“VKontakte", "Classmates", Facebook*, X, Instagram*). The accompanying text in most of the publications is the same: “Elon Musk announced his first robot girlfriend with artificial intelligence. "Musk said he invited her to dinner and enjoyed being with her, calling her smart, beautiful and obedient." Some authors provide additional details - for example, they write that with his impressions Musk shared in an interview that he published this photo is in his account on the social network X that belongs to him (but then deleted it) or that he is a businessman created myself.
Although some publications directly indicate that the photo was posted by the billionaire himself, “Verified” did not find any screenshots of the corresponding posts or their archived copies. There are no publications on this topic in any reputable American publications specializing in gossip or technological achievements, and neither an interview in which Musk allegedly talked about his companion, nor just news items. It was also not possible to find any photographs from a different angle, taken, for example, by eyewitnesses of the unusual meeting. A search on Musk's blog in X using the keywords "robot", "dinner" and others found in viral posts was unsuccessful.
If you look closely at the photo, you will notice several strange details in it: the tines of the forks lying on the table are of a strange shape, the Tesla logo (another Musk-owned company) is depicted on the plate, but the signature under it is an unreadable set of symbols, the hands of the robot itself do not look like human ones, although in other respects it is anthropomorphic. Such oddities are typical for pictures created using neural networks. This hypothesis is confirmed by the results of image analysis carried out using a specialized service Hive Moderation - according to him, the picture was generated by artificial intelligence (AI) with a probability of 99.7%.
The earliest post containing this photo that "Verified" could find using a reverse image search was posted July 8, 2024 on social network X, but not by Elon Musk, but by a user with the nickname Not Elon Musk. The publication does not contain a story about the alleged dinner and the billionaire’s praises for his mechanical companion; the author only asked the question: “Will this soon become the norm?” A month later the blogger again posted this photo, but with a slightly different comment: “Would you find the robot attractive?” At the same time, both in the profile name and in its username @iamnot_elon It is expressly stated that this account does not belong to Elon Musk.
The viral image is far from the only one on this parody account. One gets the impression that the blogger simply wants to arrange Mask’s personal life with the robot, because he created tens images businessman in company robot girls varying degrees anthropomorphism. He posted and snapshot the billionaire himself in the guise of a robot.
However, the idea of a Musk imitator is by no means new. In May 2023, agency fact checkers AFP have already refuted a series of photos with the billionaire, where he kissed or danced with various robotic women. They were allegedly about to be launched for sale by one of Musk’s companies. Internet users even named the estimated price of the robot wife - about $3,000. However, even then all the images turned out to be generated by AI, and there were no such developments ready for mass production and sale.
Musk's Tesla, best known for its electric vehicles, is indeed at the forefront of robotics. Back in 2022 she presented a prototype humanoid robot, Optimus (apparently named after a character in the Transformers film series), which is being developed to help with housework and other tasks. In the fall of 2024, Tesla showed the second generation of Optimus, and Musk said that his robots will change the world more than the advent of cars. But, judging by stories eyewitnesses did not demonstrate any exceptional miracles of AI Optimus. Although they participated in the presentation (danced among the guests, served drinks or answered questions), they acted non-autonomously and still needed human control. That is, even despite constant work in this direction, the appearance of a robot girl with whom you could go to a restaurant and enjoy her company is still very far away.
Thus, there was no dinner between Elon Musk and a robot girl, the billionaire did not tell journalists about it and did not publish viral pictures on his blog on X. The image was generated using AI, it was published by the owner of a parody account on the same social network. The picture acquired colorful details of the supposed dinner and even alleged quotes from Musk himself as it was further disseminated.
Cover photo: @iamnot_elon /X
*Russian authorities consider the company Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social networks Facebook and Instagram, to be an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.
Read on the topic:
- Maxim. How Tesla's Optimus Robot Could Transform Daily Life
- How to recognize a deepfake: tools for analyzing images generated by neural networks
- Is it true that for the first time in history there was a concert in the United States where a robot sang?
- Is it true that in the movie “Terminator” the artificial intelligence “Skynet” took over the planet in 2024?
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