Elon Musk Says Tesla's Optimus Can Learn Tasks By Watching YouTube Videos Just Like A Human

Benzinga
2025.05.21 07:32
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Tesla's CEO Elon Musk announced that the company's Optimus robot is progressing in humanoid robotics, with the ability to learn tasks by watching YouTube videos, similar to human learning. Musk stated that this breakthrough could allow Optimus to learn quickly from various videos, enhancing its task capabilities. Tesla's engineering lead, Milan Kovac, confirmed that the goal is for Optimus to learn from internet videos, with many new skills emerging. Musk also highlighted the potential of the humanoid robot market, projecting a $5 trillion global market by 2050 and aiming to produce a million robots by 2030.

Tesla Inc. TSLA is making significant strides in humanoid robotics, with CEO Elon Musk revealing that the company’s Optimus robot is developing the ability to learn tasks by watching videos, similar to human learning patterns.

What Happened: In a recent interview with CNBC at Tesla headquarters, Musk explained that while Optimus currently learns through human demonstration using motion capture technology, the company is close to achieving a major breakthrough.

“I think there’s certain threshold breakthroughs that we think we can achieve, where if Optimus can watch videos, YouTube videos or how-to videos or whatever, and based on that video, just like a human can, learn how to do that thing,” Musk said. “Then you really have a task extensibility that is dramatic, because it can learn anything very quickly. So I think we’ll get there in the next year.”

This development was reinforced by Tesla Optimus Engineering lead Milan Kovac, who elaborated on X: “One of our goals is to have Optimus learn straight from internet videos of humans doing tasks. Those are often 3rd person views captured by random cameras.”

Kovac added that “many new skills are emerging through this process,” which can be activated via voice or text commands and run on “a single neural network on the bot.”

“We’re working through that with China. Hopefully, we’ll get a license to use the rare earth magnets. China wants some assurances that these are not used for military purposes, which, obviously, they’re not,” Musk explained.

The humanoid robot market represents massive potential, with Morgan Stanley projecting a $5 trillion global market by 2050. Musk believes humanoid robots will become “the biggest product ever” with “insatiable” demand, aiming to produce a million robots by 2030.

Image Via Shutterstock

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