This image of Elon Musk dining with a ‘robot girlfriend’ isn’t real, it’s AI-generated

A Facebook post claims to have photographic proof that Elon Musk, X’s owner and Tesla’s CEO, dined with a "robot girlfriend," but that image was generated with artificial intelligence.

The image shows Musk seated at a restaurant table next to a blond-haired woman with a gray robotic body. 

"Elon Musk has announced his first robot girlfriend, with artificial intelligence. Musk said he took her out to dinner and enjoyed talking to her, calling her smart, beautiful and obedient … Wow this is so crazy!!," an Aug. 10 Facebook post said.

Other posts on Instagram, Facebook, also shared the image with similar claims. Posts in Spanish also share the photo, falsely claiming it showed Musk’s robot girlfriend.

The posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

(Screenshot of Facebook post.)

We found no credible reports or statements from Tesla or Musk that he created a robot girlfriend.

When doing a reverse-image search, PolitiFact found that  the X account @iamnot_elon posted the video July 23. The image is captioned: "Will this be normal soon?"

The X profile notes that the account does not belong to Musk and that it is a parody account. The account has posted other images created with artificial intelligence, including images of Musk and presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

Featured Fact-check

Instagram posts

stated on August 9, 2024 in una publicación en Instagram

"Elon Musk anuncia su primera novia (un robot con inteligencia artificial)".

PolitiFact asked Siwei Lyu, a University at Buffalo professor who specializes in digital media forensics, whether the image on Facebook was AI-generated.

"This image is highly likely to be generated by AI models," Lyu said. "There are plenty of artifacts, such as Musk's hands … but also the details of the utensils." Musk appears to have an extra finger and the utensils on the table look distorted.

There are programs that identify whether images were generated with artificial intelligence. Although these programs are not infallible, one of them, Hive Moderation, showed that Musk's image has a 99.9% probability of being AI-generated.

Musk posted July 22 on X that "Tesla will have genuinely useful humanoid robots in low production for Tesla internal use next year and, hopefully, high production for other companies in 2026."

These robots called Tesla Bot or Optimus are capable of performing "unsafe, repetitive or boring tasks" in the workforce, according to Tesla’s website.

On Jan. 15, Musk posted a video on X of one of the humanoids folding a shirt. Musk said that "Optimus" cannot do this autonomously yet, but will in the future.

During a Tesla shareholders’ meeting May 16, Musk presented a video showing that the robots can walk and pick up items. The robots were first unveiled in 2022.

Tech 4 Peace, an Iraqi fact-checking outlet and signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network, also reported that the image of Musk with the supposed girlfriend robot was created with artificial intelligence. The fact-checkers also ran the image through an AI detection program and said that the parody account posted other images made with AI.

In 2023, PolitiFact rated False similar images of Musk kissing a robot.

The image of Musk seated in a restaurant with a humanoid robot is not real. We rate claims that he "announced his first robot girlfriend, with artificial intelligence" False.