A robot knocks a man down , hits him in the back and wounds his hand and arm with its steel claw . It is not a scene from a film, nor the story of a distant dystopian future, but rather what happened two years ago in a Tesla factory in Texas , when an engineer was attacked by one of the many androids that populate the company he founded by Elon Musk .

It was the Daily Mail tabloid that brought out the 2021 story at a time when concerns are increasing about the risks posed by artificial intelligence and automated machines, more or less sophisticated, in the workplace.

The owner of Tesla immediately downplayed the episode by placing the responsibility for the accident on a robotic arm present in factories around the world and exonerating his creature, the humanoid robot Optimus. “It is truly shameful that the media brings up an accident from two years ago due to a simple Kuka industrial robotic arm and insinuates that it is now due to Optimus,” he wrote in a post on X.

Before being attacked, the engineer was reprogramming the software of two other machines, which were disabled at the time.

Two colleagues witnessed the scene horrified and terrified and were the ones who pressed the emergency button to free the engineer from the robot's claws, according to what they told the website The Information. A tragedy averted, witnesses said, speaking of "a trail of blood" left on the factory floor .

According to official Tesla documents, the employee suffered an injury to his hand and did not require any sick days.

Since then it seems there have been no more incidents of this kind but according to lawyer Hannah Alexander, who represents the contract workers at the Austin factory, there have been others, including the suspicious death of the worker from heatstroke Antelmo Ramirez, again in 2021 .

Beyond the episodes that disturbingly recall science fiction, Elon Musk's company has often been criticized for its levels of safety at work and for the lack of transparency in reporting accidents. At the plant in question, for example, the data shows a higher injury rate than the industry average: one worker in 26 compared to one worker in 38 at other major U.S. auto factories.