Featured Image Credit: Reddit/knock_his_block_off/X/@Tesla
Robots serving drinks aren't anything new.
In fact, ADAM, a robot bartender, has been serving drinks at the Globe Life Fields, home to the Texas Rangers baseball team in the United States for months now.
In Japan, robot waiters are a common sight in restaurants, or even hotels for years.
However, it's not the existence of the Optimus robot that has everyone creeped out, instead, it's all about that voice.
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The Optimus Robot was first unveiled by billionaire and Tesla boss Elon Musk during the 'We, Robot' event held on October 10th.
There, not just one, but a parade of Tesla's humanoid Optimus robots was showcased, alongside the reveal of the companies new Robovan vehicle.
After the Musk hosted presentation, revealing what Tesla has been cooking up, these pricy robots were serving drinks and dazzling Tesla and tech fans alike.
Footage of this spilled onto the likes of Reddit, including on r/ThatsInsane where the robots voice raised some questions.
Within the short clip shared on Reddit, the Optimus robot can be seen serving drinks and posing for photos. In-between attending customers, the Optimus even spoke to and replied to those in attendance of the tech event.
This raised a lot of questions, especially where the voice is concerned.
One Reddit user stated, 'yeah that voice isn't AI.'
Meanwhile, a fellow r/ThatsInsane Reddit user commented, 'I can believe that the beer pouring is is autonomous but the voice interaction just has to be remotely controlled.'
While the advancement of AI has allowed for realistic sounding artificial voices to be integrated into tech, the lack of the human touch is still noticeable. To get the best sounding voice for anything, using professional trained voice actors is always going to be the best option.
While we can only speculate, it could very well be that the Optimus robots, like the one in the video, were being controlled remotely, which includes staff using their voice to reply to onlookers and passers-by.
One user suggested the robot was being 'puppeteered by someone' wearing a mo-cap suit, which could account for its overtly realistic-movements for such recent tech, and even its bizarre voice.
While it may be a while until an Optimus robot makes it way into your local pub, Musk stated that the tech will be a 'fundamental transformation for civilization.'
That fundamental piece of tech, however, is expected to cost around $20,000, which is almost as off-putting as its own voice.
