Tesla unveils humanoid robot Elon Musk says is future of car manufacturing

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Elon Musk debuted a prototype of how Tesla aims to bring humanoid robots into the workplace -- and eventually your home.

"Optimus" is Musk's long-anticipated humanoid robot. It was revealed at Tesla's 2022 AI Day, "Good Morning America" reported.

"This is literally the first time the robot has operated without a tether," Musk said.

The 5-foot-8 prototype walked on-stage, waved to the audience and even busted a move.

The bot, running with the same hardware makeup as Tesla's autopilot system, is fully equipped with advanced, human-like qualities.

"It's gonna do everything that a human brain does --- processing vision data, making split-second decisions based on sensory inputs, and also communications," an engineer said.

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The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said he hopes Optimus will one day handle tasks thought to be boring, repetitive or downright dangerous.

"It really is a fundamental transformation of civilization as we know it," Musk said.

The release of this long-anticipated humanoid robot comes just four months after Tesla announced it's cutting 10% of its salaried staff; the company later clarified that its hourly staff is expected grow, meaning the total cutbacks would only be 3.5%.

"He predicts that this new robotic future, where there's not many human employees, the profits from that and then the type of economic activity that will be produced from that will be so great that governments and other entities will be able to afford to actually pay humans to basically do nothing," said Alistair Barr, tech editor for Business Insider.

AI has been a mainstay in pop-culture ever since the Terminator showed what a worst-case-scenario future could look like.

Things looked more promising in 2004's "I, Robot," where the AIs acted more like servants.

But new technology does mean new safety concerns.