The Future of Humanoid Robots: Apple and Meta’s Competing Visions

The fierce mixed-reality-headset arena is witnessing strong competition between Apple and Meta in a new area which is AI humanoids. This was made known by analyst Mark Gurman in his latest Power On newsletter for Bloomberg.

The newsletter stated that both of these tech giants are working on their own AI humanoid robots. The report attributes Meta to setting up a whole new department in its Reality Labs hardware division to drive this program forward.  Whereas, Apple has taken a different tack, having its humanoid robot designed by its Machine Learning team. 

The newsletter goes on to say that these AI humanoids would be doing chores like folding t-shirts, dancing, and boiling eggs, almost like a cross between being trained in AI and Tesla’s Optimus robot. Gurman went on to say that there are many parallels between the Project Human being developed by Apple and Tesla.

As for Meta, the company is looking to create a software platform that will allow hardware developers to exploit the AI humanoid market. With an edge in mixed-reality sensors and computing and the Llama AI model, Meta claims to be in a strong position. 

The report suggests that Meta has begun talks concerning these robots together with China’s UnitreeRobotics and Figure AI. Apple, meanwhile, is developing its own humanoid robot that will showcase its AI skills and tightly integrated technology. 

The project is spearheaded by Apple’s advanced AI research teams. At the We, Robot meeting in October 2024, Tesla CEO Elon Musk declared that AI humanoid robots will get along with humans soon and will join the family setting. 

Musk in reference to the Tesla bots said, “The Optimus will walk amongst you. You’ll be able to walk right up to them, and they will serve drinks.” He laid emphasis on the fact that Optimus is capable of doing almost everything. He asserted, “Anything you can think of, it can do,” he maintains.