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Pete Davidson? Kanye West? Step aside. Kim Kardashian’s new beaux is a Tesla bot named Optimus.
The fashion mogul got some hands-on experience with Tesla’s bipedal, human-shaped robot, which is not yet available to the general public. In Kardashian’s videos with the robot — posted to X and her Instagram story — she prompts Optimus to make a heart with its hand (unlike Kim, Optimus is not wearing massive bling), dance like it’s at a luau, and play rock paper scissors.
Then, she joins a one-of-a-kind gold version of the robot to sit inside Tesla’s Cybercab, a two-passenger autonomous vehicle that CEO Elon Musk says will begin production in 2027. However, even Musk admitted that he’s not always realistic with his timelines — after all, he predicted in 2019 that Tesla would have a million robotaxis on the road within a year. It has been nearly five.
Tesla flaunted its Optimus robots at its We, Robot event last month, and while the event was flashy, the robots that greeted guests on the ground were not autonomous: They were controlled by humans. So, it’s likely that Kardashian’s own experience with Optimus was mediated by humans as well.
Kardashian’s videos don’t show any actual driving in the Cybercab, but she describes the vehicle as “insane” and “crazy.” Musk hasn’t responded directly to Kardashian’s videos, but he retweeted one of them on X.
Kardashian didn’t flag the videos as being sponsored — something that is legally mandated for influencers to disclose —but we know she is already bought into the Tesla sphere. She owns a Cybertruck, though TMZ says she was recently pulled over because her front window was tinted too dark. Maybe Optimus can help her fix that.
Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch covering the intersection of technology and culture. She has also written for publications like Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast about internet culture, with science fiction author Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked as a grassroots organizer, museum educator, and film festival coordinator. She holds a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and served as a Princeton in Asia Fellow in Laos.
Send tips through Signal, an encrypted messaging app, to (929) 593-0227. For anything else, email amanda@techcrunch.com.
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