Elon Musk in love and freshly married to a robot woman: the new hoax that ignites the web

He holds her by the hips, ready to kiss her. She, an arm resting on her shoulder (that of Elon Musk) sports a perfect face, surrounded by long brown hair. Looking down a little lower, the rest of his body, made of electricity and metal, actually betrays his lack of humanity. Catanela, her false name, is a humanoid that the billionaire is about to marry. At least that's what the story that accompanies this photo that has been viral for several days, acknowledgement of the supposed new wacky project of the boss of Twitter.

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"Elon Musk and his company are in the final stages of making a female robot," says a post shared on Facebook nearly 500 times, since May 17. "Robot Wife will use batteries that last in accordance with the menstrual cycle. The batteries will only be charged for three full days and will run for a month. Se.x.uelles relations with this Robot Wife will require a password, a pattern or a fingerprint, "we can read in comment. Information that was enough to feed the most extravagant rumors. Some have even gone so far as to imagine a price, the android costing between 32,000 and 79,000 dollars. Worse, the Tesla executive has since fallen in love with his creation, going so far as to marry her in secret.

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Sloppy details

As you can see, the news is an intox. The image, or rather the images – several shots have since been shared, showing the same Elon Musk with a red-haired robot, or another with black skin – were created by artificial intelligence. Some details are enough to prove it: by zooming the image, Catanela strangely has six fingers; The billionaire's body also differs, making him appear, according to the photographs, at times sluggish, by other muscular.

The image originally comes from a digital art artist's account, dubbed "Art in 2 inspire" on Instagram. The latter, who is at the origin of many illustrations, has also posted several publications on his account to denounce the appropriation of these creations by some users. "Again, I'm doing something and someone is trying to take credit for it," one read. We owe him another image, created again by artificial intelligence, this time featuring the boss of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg.

Completely fake images, certainly, but which pull the thread of a real project. In 2022, the Tesla company, managed by Elon Musk, announced that it was currently working on a humanoid robot project called "Tesla Optimus". On April 22, 2023, the company had published a first video (above) showing the progress on its creations: robots capable of moving and picking up objects. Although purely invented by the web, could these robot-women finally give ideas to the one who has always made it his mission to go beyond the limits of science?