How far are we from robots that cook, clean and take care of your family?
Car manufacturers like Elon Musk’s Tesla and Chinese smart EV company XPeng are at the forefront of tech news on AI humanoids.
When people doubted that a humanoid shown by Chinese smart EV company Xpeng was in fact a robot, the makers cut it open on stage last month.
Although some doubt still lurks around it, the topic of humanoids and their place among us has been brewing, with Elon Musk this year saying Tesla’s focus will be on robots.
Tesla recently released a progress video of the Optimus Gen. 3 robot, which the makers claim will be able to perform about 4000 household tasks and hope to launch commercially next year.
He Xiaopeng, cofounder and chairman of Chinese electric vehicle maker Xpeng, launches Xpeng's next-gen Iron humanoid robot in southern China's Guangdong province on 5 November, 2025.
AFP / Jade Gao
American Kurt Knutsson - aka Kurt The Cyberguy, a two-time Emmy Award winner for tech journalism - says Musk tends to put out “a lot of shiny, headline-catchy stuff” so his comments should be taken with a grain of salt.
Whether the robot can really do thousands of tasks in a real-life home setting remains to be seen, he says.
In fact, when the first gen was unveiled, it really was a human in a costume – hence the doubt about Xpeng’s Iron humanoid. Last year, Musk posted a video of the robot folding a shirt before later admitting that it had been remotely controlled by a human, The Telegraph reported.
A Tesla Optimus robot serves popcorn on the outdoor deck during the opening of the Tesla Diner and Drive-In restaurant and Supercharger in Los Angeles, California on 21 July, 2025.
AFP / Patrick T Fallon
Still, it is a major advancement in technology, Knutsson told Sunday Morning. Musk may be a controversial figure, he says, but he has been fast-paced and has focused on the realism of body and hand movement.
“We've talked with robot makers all around the world … and what we know is that Elon Musk is in one of the best positions to be able to actually manufacture humanoid robots to scale in the kind of way that he is bragging about, in the kind of way that there will be like an Optimus available in every home in the future.”
At the same time, Knutsson asks: “where’s the off button?”
“We've yet to really hear his safety mechanisms inside of how Optimus will be controlled.
"While this thing may do dances and performances, and wow us and dazzle us, and we get one, I've got an eye on the practicality of how much this can actually work in our lives and how safe are we from its technology growing?"
A journalist touches Xpeng's next-gen Iron humanoid robotic hand at its headquarter in Guangzhou, in southern China's Guangdong province on 6 November, 2025.
AFP / Jade Gao
Beyond that, Knutsson says it could prove helpful for an ageing population.
“Something that's really important that I think we've got our eye on is, as you and I get older, and we need help and we need some assistance around us, a robot is going to be a profoundly useful device to keep you and I free of having to go to one of those old folks' homes.”
And their introduction into the home may be sooner than we think, he says. EV makers in China are leading the marketplace for it, he says.
“Keep your eye on car manufacturers around the world. China's really the leader in the process of manufacturing automobiles at this point.
“They’re just going to simply instead of putting a car down that production line, it's going to be robots and they are the best poised to deliver scale robots to the world.”
