Is Elon Musk developing robots that can carry a fertilized fetus to term for nine months, as posts on social media claim? No, that's not true: There is no evidence that such a robot is in development as of this writing. Musk did not talk about this at his October 2024 event, "We, Robot."
A version of the claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Facebook on October 22, 2024, with a caption that read:
Mommas.. I need y'all opinion on this one..
Elon is Currently working on a new version of Robots that can carry your baby for 9 months while you go about your work . You and your partner just need to bring your spèřms and eggs . They fertilize and allow it to grow inside the robot for 9 months .
This is going to reduce the number of women that díe during Delivery .
Moral lesson : Thoughts ?
This is how the post appeared at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken Tue Oct 26 11:11:40 2024 UTC)
The claims on social media circulated after Musk hosted "We, Robots," a Tesla event on October 10, 2024, at which he showcased the latest human-like robots and autonomous transportation using "cybercabs." Musk did not mention robots capable of carrying a human fetus or embryo to term at the event.
At least one publication, EuroWeekly (archived here), wrote that "Rumour has it, that the Tesla chief is cooking up a brand-new bot that could carry your baby for nine whole months," but it had no evidence to confirm this.
At the 19:56-minute mark in the "We, Robots" livestream, Musk discussed the company's latest advancements in the development of the Optimus (archived here), a "robot with arms and legs." In a video shown in the livestream, Optimus performed household tasks like carrying groceries and watering a houseplant. During the event, Musk did not say that Optimus, or any other Musk-created robot, is now capable of, or will in the future, carry human fetuses to term.
The photos in the post on Facebook do not resemble the Optimus robot, nor were they shown at the "We, Robots" event.
The AI detection program Hive Moderation determined that the videos were more than 98 percent "likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content." The results are shown below:
(Source: Hive screenshots taken Tue Oct 29 00:47:57 2024 UTC)
Social media posts claiming the human-carrying robots were in development did not include supporting information, such as where or when the plans were purportedly made or a link to the announcement.
Tesla's 2024 press releases (archived here) did not mention robots carrying human embryos or fetuses.
Advanced keyword searches on the verified X profiles belonging to Optimus (archived here), Tesla (archived here), and Musk's account (archived here) returned many results. However, none of these included information to support the development of a robot that will carry a human embryo to term.
Lead Stories also searched using keywords on the Google News archive of thousands of reliable information sites, available here (archived here). The search did not return any obvious entries supporting Musk's supposed plans to unveil a robot capable of carrying fertilized human embryos.
Lead Stories contacted Tesla about the claim. If we receive a response, we will update this fact check.
Other fact checks on claims related to Elon Musk can be read here.
