The NEO Robot

You've probably seen the NEO home robot by now, from the company 1X. It's a friendly humanoid with a plush-toy face that can work around your house. Cleaning, making beds, folding laundry, even picking up after meals. Most importantly, there's the way it looks. Unlike Tesla's "Optimus," which resembles an industrial robot, NEO looks friendly. It has a cute, plush face with round eyes. Something you could let your children play with.

But after watching their launch video, I only had one thing on my mind: battery life. And that's how you know I was tricked.

The Misdirection

Battery life is four hours after a full charge according to the company, but that's the wrong thing to focus on.

Remember when Tesla first announced Optimus? Elon Musk made sure to emphasize one statement, they purposely capped the robot's speed to 5 miles per hour. Then he joked that "you can just outrun it and most likely overpower it." This steered the conversation toward safety in AI and robots. a masterful bit of misdirection from the fact that there was no robot whatsoever at the time. Not even a prototype. Just a person in a suit doing a silly dance.

With NEO, we saw a lot more. The robot loaded laundry into the machine, tidied up the home, did the dishes. Real demonstrations with real hardware. But what they failed to emphasize was just as important. All actions in the video were entirely remote controlled.

What I Assumed Wrongly

Here are the assumptions I was making while watching their video.

Once you turn on this robot, it would first need to understand your home. Since it operates as a housekeeper, it would map your space using the dual cameras on its head, saving this information to some internal drive. It would need to recognize you both visually and through your voice. You'd register your face and voice like Face ID. They stated it can charge itself, so the dexterity of its hands must be precise enough to plug itself in autonomously.

All reasonable assumptions for a $20,000 "AI home robot," right?

But these are just assumptions. Then the founder mentions you can "teach it new tasks," overseen by one of their experts that you can book at specific times. Since we're not seeing the robot do anything autonomously, I'm left wondering. What does "teaching the robot a skill" even mean?

What NEO Actually Is

The NEO is indeed a humanoid robot. But it's not an autonomous AI robot. It's a teleoperated robot that lives in your home. A remote operator from 1X views through its cameras and controls its movements when it needs to perform a tasks.

If that's what they're building, it should be crystal clear. People need to understand what they're buying and the implications that come with it. You're allowing someone from a company to work in your home remotely, using a humanoid robot as their avatar, seeing everything the robot sees.

Looking at the videos published by outlets like the Wall Street Journal, even the teleoperated functionality appears limited. MKBHD also offers an excellent analysis that's worth watching.

1X positions this teleoperation as a training mechanism. The "Expert Mode" that generates data to eventually make the robot autonomous. It's a reasonable approach, similar to how Tesla gathered data for Full Self-Driving. But the difference is your car camera feeds helped train a system; NEO's cameras invite a stranger into your most private spaces.

The company says it has implemented privacy controls, scheduled sessions, no-go zones, visual indicators when someone's watching, face-blurring technology, etc. These are necessary safeguards, but they don't change the fundamental problem. This is not an autonomous robot. Also, you are acting as a data provider for the company while paying $20,000 for the hardware.

My Prediction

2026 is just around the corner. I expect the autonomous capabilities to be quietly de-emphasized in marketing as we approach the release date. I also expect delays attributed to "high demand" and "ensuring safety standards."

I don't expect this robot to deliver in 2026. If it does, it will be a teleoperated humanoid. With my privacy concerns, I will probably not be an early or late adopter. But I'll happily seat on the sidelines and watch the chaos unfold. A teleoperated humanoid sounds like the next logical step for an Uber or DoorDash. The company should just be clear about what they are building.

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