Is Tesla’s new Optimus humanoid robot capable of speech? Although it appeared to “talk” to attendees at an Oct. 10 event, CEO Elon Musk never definitively said this is possible.

Musk has discussed his vision that Optimus Gen 2 will be able to understand and follow spoken commands in the future. He said the robot should eventually be able to interpret instructions such as “pick up that bolt, attach it to the car with that key,” indicating that Optimus has plans to process natural language.

At Tesla’s recent We, Robot event, several Optimus models circulated among the crowd and appeared to talk to them. Skeptics and believers took to Musk-owned X, formerly Twitter, to share their thoughts on the robot’s capabilities.

Tech evangelist and author Robert Scoble was at the event and shared video footage describing the encounter with Optimus. In response to @altryne’s question to him: “Is it talking or is someone walkie-talking over the speakers? What do you think?” he replied, “Walkie-talkie.”

Newsweek contacted Tesla via email for comment.

There is no confirmation that Optimus can speak or communicate verbally with humans, but it appears that the intention is that it will respond to verbal commands as its abilities evolve. Tesla’s focus was more on the robot’s physical autonomy and task performance within controlled environments, such as factories.

“I have a feeling these could be controlled via telepresence, or at least the voice is definitely guided by a human on the other end while the robot performs the actions. I’ve seen two different videos now and it appears the robot voices are different are ,” said X user @AkalStation.

In response to Scoble’s video, he added: “I found the answer – 1:13 timestamp on the video here. The engineer says ‘assisted’ which seems like another way of saying teleoperated without being teleoperated say haha.”

Later in the event, Scoble posted: “Robot moves. @Tesla Optimus will teach you how to dance,” sharing a video of the humanoid robot dancing to Giobbi & Mascolo’s LP So nice to be in love.

X user @protosphinx replied to Scoble, “looks like a telebot,” to which he replied, “It is.” It is not clear whether he is talking about the robot’s ability to speak and/or move independently of human intervention.

However, other attendees shared how impressed they were with Optimus.

“I never expected to speak to @Tesla_Optimus in person today! It was so impressive!” said X user @affinity892, who shared a video of Optimus serving him a drink while appearing to ask “how’s your night so far?”

Tesla’s previous announcements appear to have focused more on the robot’s physical autonomy and task performance within controlled environments, followed eventually by the ability to “walk your dog, mow your lawn, pick up the groceries, just talk to your friend.” to serve drinks,” says Muskus.

Newsweek asked Musk’s Grok AI chatbot, which scours talking without human intervention.”

“The information provided indicates that Optimus is performing tasks, but no emphasis has been placed on its independent speech capabilities,” Grok added. “This could indicate that it may have some form of vocal communication, but it has not been a focal point of demonstrations, suggesting it is not yet fully developed or is not a priority for the showcase.”