Elon Musk’s plan to show off his dancing robot has left the Tesla CEO red-faced after his own AI made an embarrassing admission.

On X, which Musk owns, the billionaire shared an impressive ‘real real-time’ video of Tesla’s humanoid robot, Optimus, demonstrating some flashy dance moves.

However, when a curious commenter asked the billionaire’s AI, Grok, to rate the robot, the chatbot declared Optimus’ usefulness is ‘limited’.

Adding to the humiliation, the AI then ranked Optimus at the bottom of its list of the best humanoid robots.

In response to the user’s question, Grok wrote: ‘Tesla’s Optimus robot shows advanced mobility with its dancing, highlighting strong balance and coordination.

‘However, its real-world use is limited, mainly in Tesla’s factories for simple tasks, with broader deployment planned for 2026.’

Putting Optimus at the bottom of its top-five ranking, the AI added that the robot has ‘impressive mobility but early in practical application.’

On X, this left many Musk fans torn between their support for the tech-leader’s various projects, with one complaining: ‘GROK falling for PR magic.’

This latest post is the most recent update on the development of Tesla’s Optimus robot.

In previous posts, the robot appeared to be capable of only slow walking speeds and simple static tasks.

With its new dancing abilities, showcased in a number of different styles, the robot has clearly made significant progress over the last few months.

However, this was not enough to convince Elon Musk’s AI to bump it up in the rankings.

Grok instead gave the top spot to Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot, which the AI said: ‘excels in dynamic movements like parkour.’

Pressed for more information by another commenter, Grok explained that it had ranked Atlas as the best due to its ‘unmatched agility and research foundation.

The AI added: ‘Its new electric version targets practical tasks in industry, backed by Hyundai testing.’

Grok then placed the Figure AI ‘Figure 01/02’ and the Agility Robots ‘Digit’ in second and third place respectively, followed by the UBTECH ‘Walker S1’ in fourth.

Grok emphasises the practical uses of each of these three robots, such as deployment in factories, warehouses, or automotive assembly lines.

Similarly, several commenters on X agreed that the skills demonstrated by Musk’s robot didn’t seem likely to help in any practical setting.

One commenter demanded: ‘Show me how they cook, clean, do repair work…’

‘If it can pull weeds and maintain the yard just take my money,’ another commenter chimed in.

While one user complained: ‘Oh no, not Optimus too! Dancing robot videos are kinda pointless?’

In an attempt to save face, another Tesla fan asked Grok: ‘Who would be able to scale robotics the best?’

Unfortunately for Musk and his supporters, the AI still wasn’t willing to play along and once again gave its support to another company.

Grok wrote in response: ‘Chinese companies like UBTECH and Unitree are currently best positioned to scale humanoid robotics.

‘They benefit from lower costs – Unitree’s G1 is priced at $16,000 – and a strong manufacturing ecosystem in China, with plans to produce over 1,000 units in 2025.’

However, many Tesla fans were still very impressed by Optimus’ dance moves and flocked to the comments to share their support.

One social media user wrote: ‘Wow, that’s incredible! Moves are remarkably similar to human movements.’

Another added: ‘Fluidity of movement is getting really good, thought it wasn’t real at first.’

Despite a lack of support from his own AI, Musk has big plans for his humanoid robots.

The Tesla CEO has frequently said that robots could be used to replace humans in environments like factories to perform repetitive or dangerous tasks.

To achieve this, he hopes to massively scale up the production of robots and reduce their cost.

According to Musk, when Optimus finally launches in 2026, it would retail for $20,000 to $30,000 (£15,000-£22,000) with the potential for the price to fall further in the future.

Speaking at a tech conference in Saudi Arabia last year, Musk predicted that there could be as many as 10 billion humanoid robots on Earth by 2040.

However, current events make such rapid development much more unlikely.

During a Tesla earnings call in April, Musk admitted Trump’s tariffs on China were causing problems for the robot’s development.

In response to increased tariffs, China suspended exports to any country of ‘heavy rare earth metals’ and magnets made from these.

China currently produces the entire global supply of heavy rare earth metals and 90 per cent of the magnets made from these, with the remaining 10 per cent of magnets being made with Chinese raw materials.

Musk said that these magnets are vital for creating the powerful, compact motors which allow Optimus’s arms to move.

Musk said: ‘That’s more affected by the supply chain, by basically China requiring an export license to send out anywhere with magnets, so we’re working through that with China.’

He added: ‘China wants assurances that these are not used for military purposes, which obviously they’re not. 

‘They’re just going into a humanoid robot. So that’s not a weapon system.’

Likewise, as reported by the South China Morning Post, experts don’t believe Tesla can make Optimus for $20,000 without access to China’s vast, efficient supply chains.

He Liang, founder and chairman of Yunmu Intelligent Manufacturing, a humanoid-robot maker based in Suzhou, told the publication that as much as two-thirds of Tesla’s components depend on Chinese suppliers.

Mr Liang said: ‘Without the Chinese supply chain, the cost on their end would likely be at least 50 per cent higher.’

But with a year until Optimus’ targeted release date, there is still plenty of time for more developments in US-China trade relations that could make Musk’s goal possible.

A TIMELINE OF ELON MUSK’S COMMENTS ON AI

Musk has been a long-standing, and very vocal, condemner of AI technology and the precautions humans should take 

Elon Musk is one of the most prominent names and faces in developing technologies. 

The billionaire entrepreneur heads up SpaceX, Tesla and the Boring company. 

But while he is on the forefront of creating AI technologies, he is also acutely aware of its dangers. 

Here is a comprehensive timeline of all Musk’s premonitions, thoughts and warnings about AI, so far.   

August 2014 – ‘We need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes.’ 

October 2014 – ‘I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I were to guess like what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful with the artificial intelligence.’

October 2014 – ‘With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon.’ 

June 2016 – ‘The benign situation with ultra-intelligent AI is that we would be so far below in intelligence we’d be like a pet, or a house cat.’

July 2017 – ‘I think AI is something that is risky at the civilisation level, not merely at the individual risk level, and that’s why it really demands a lot of safety research.’ 

July 2017 – ‘I have exposure to the very most cutting-edge AI and I think people should be really concerned about it.’

July 2017 – ‘I keep sounding the alarm bell but until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don’t know how to react because it seems so ethereal.’

August 2017 –  ‘If you’re not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea.’

November 2017 – ‘Maybe there’s a five to 10 percent chance of success [of making AI safe].’

March 2018 – ‘AI is much more dangerous than nukes. So why do we have no regulatory oversight?’ 

April 2018 – ‘[AI is] a very important subject. It’s going to affect our lives in ways we can’t even imagine right now.’

April 2018 – ‘[We could create] an immortal dictator from which we would never escape.’ 

November 2018 – ‘Maybe AI will make me follow it, laugh like a demon & say who’s the pet now.’

September 2019 – ‘If advanced AI (beyond basic bots) hasn’t been applied to manipulate social media, it won’t be long before it is.’

February 2020 – ‘At Tesla, using AI to solve self-driving isn’t just icing on the cake, it the cake.’

July 2020 – ‘We’re headed toward a situation where AI is vastly smarter than humans and I think that time frame is less than five years from now. But that doesn’t mean that everything goes to hell in five years. It just means that things get unstable or weird.’ 

April 2021: ‘A major part of real-world AI has to be solved to make unsupervised, generalized full self-driving work.’

February 2022: ‘We have to solve a huge part of AI just to make cars drive themselves.’ 

December 2022: ‘The danger of training AI to be woke – in other words, lie – is deadly.’