When Elon Musk posts on his social media platform X (formerly Twitter), the world pays attention. Whether it's a tweet about space travel, artificial intelligence, or his on-again, off-again equation with Donald Trump, the space-to-electric-vehicles billionaire knows how to command digital conversation.
On Wednesday, it was a dancing robot.
On his X account – now called “gorklon rust” – Musk posted a short clip of Tesla’s humanoid robot, Optimus, executing a dance.
The caption was minimal: just an emoji of a dancing man. Later, replying to his own post, Musk added a clarification: “This is real, real-time.”
The clip, which featured Optimus shifting weight, rotating its limbs and mimicking rhythmic human movement, instantly went viral.
While many viewers expressed astonishment, others were skeptical. “Is this real or AI-created?” one X user asked in a reply. The question drew immediate attention.
X’s in-built AI chatbot, Grok, weighed in. According to Grok, the clip was indeed consistent with Optimus’s capabilities. It referenced previous public displays such as the We,Robot showcase held in October 2024, and internal updates shared by Tesla as recently as April 2025.
Still, debate persisted.
Milan Kovac, a Tesla engineer working on the Optimus project, reshared Musk’s post with more context: “More coming shortly! The team has been working very hard in the background. Entirely trained in simulation with RL. Many optimisations and fixes have been put in place in our sim-to-real training code.”
Kovac also addressed a detail that fueled some of the skepticism... a visible cable attached to the robot. “The cable is there in case of a fall (not actually holding the bot) since this is an early result which will get more stable very quickly.”
Observers noted the striking human-like nature of the dance. One commenter joked that Optimus looked like it was trying to tap dance. Another wrote, “Looks more flexible than a lot of humans.”
This isn’t the first time Musk has used social media to reveal new capabilities of the Optimus line. In December 2024, he shared footage of the robot walking across uneven terrain in a garden. That video was captioned: “Optimus can now walk on highly variable ground using neural nets to control its electric limbs.” He ended the post with a call for engineers to join Tesla’s AI division, describing it as a chance to “work on interesting real-world AI systems.”
Optimus has come a long way since its theatrical debut.
By 2022, the first working prototypes had emerged, demonstrating basic movements like walking and lifting. In 2023, Tesla introduced Optimus Gen 2, which could perform yoga poses, sort objects by color, and carry out more coordinated motions, including early attempts at dancing.
The recent video shows what appears to be a leap forward in real-time motion planning.
Musk has also made broader claims about the potential of robotics. In 2023, he predicted that humanoid robots could surpass “the best human surgeons” within five years. He cited the development of Neuralink, his neurotechnology company, as an example of how complex procedures could be handled more precisely by machines than by humans.
Musk recently accompanied Trump to Saudi Arabia. There he showed Tesla Optimus robots to Trump and Mohammed bin Salman, according to Reuters. According to a report by CNBC and a video shared by Musk on X, the Tesla CEO mentioned demonstrating Tesla's developing Optimus humanoid robots to the Saudi Crown Prince during the visit.
