At first it turns out that the robots shown to the audience are not autonomous, but controlled by a human remotely. Then the same was said about the Cybercab robot taxi. But even before that, memes began to appear on the Internet, one of which was a comparison of the new products with the movie "I, the Robot".
First of all, of course, the name of the presentation catches the eye, which clearly refers us to the famous film from 2004 with Will Smith in the lead role. The second criticism is related to the core set of technologies presented in the tape and in Elon Musk's presentation.
Alex Proyas, the director of I, Robot, probably saw the meme with the comparison or watched the presentation and came up with it himself. Anyway, he very quickly turned to the head of the Tesla company on social networks, writes Futurism.
„Hello, Elon. Can I have my projects back please?“ - wrote Alex Proyas.
In the attached image, stills from the film are placed next to mock-ups of future Tesla products, as if hinting that we are moving towards the menacing future shown to us on screen 20 years ago.
Although nothing Tesla showed is an exact replica, we can see a lot of commonalities in the Cybercab robot and even more so in the Robovan van. They have similar shapes, both technologies are unmanned and have some similarities in design details.
Interestingly, this is not the first time Tesla has been accused of using someone else's ideas. After the presentation of the Cybertruck in 2019, many people pointed out the car's similarity to the design of the car in Paul Verhoeven's sci-fi film "Full Memory", which showed us a built colony on Mars.
Given Musk's obsession with colonizing Mars and his claims that the Cybertruck can survive on any planet, this is hardly a coincidence. But many on the web don't see this as a negative thing. On the contrary, commentators note that Musk embodies the best ideas for the future in the present reality.