Alex Proyas would like his I, Robot designs back, Elon

At this stage of the game, we’re all too familiar with tech wizards lifting ideas from sci-fi dystopias for marketing. We’ve had Soylent, Soma, and Skynet. We’ve also had the Cybertruck (which is “what Bladerunner would have driven,” one famous carmaker and devoted sci-fi fan tweeted). Now, in the tradition of the iRobot vacuum, Cybertruck recaller, Dark MAGA leaper, “Bladerunner” truther, and all-around racist, sexist, antisemitic, natalist creep Elon Musk has reportedly taken some ideas from Alex Proyas’ 2004 adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s seminal series, I, Robot. At least, according to Proyas.

In a tweet on Elon Musk’s website, X, the everything site where you can do anything, as long anything includes looking at crypto ads, AI porn, and the ramblings of Nazis talking to their Nazi bots, Proyas accused Musk of taking designs from I, Robot for his robot puppets that reportedly aren’t autonomous.

Alex Proyas compares designs for I, Robot to Tesla’s latest prototypes (Source: Twitter.com)

“Hey Elon, Can I have my designs back, please?” Proyas tweeted along with side-by-side photos of character and vehicle designs from his 20-year-old movie. At a glance, Tesla’s designs resemble Proyas’, particularly the so-called Cybercab and Robovan. Of course, Tesla’s track record on following through with this stuff is pretty bad. The company famously faked its self-driving car videos, and its tests on actual roads have resulted in “hundreds of crashes” and “dozens of deaths.” But, hey, look, it’s just like the movie I, Robot, which is allegedly a future we’d all like to live in. To be fair, we’ll probably never live in this particular dystopia because Musk can’t make a good steering that doesn’t fly off while you’re driving.

It’s always interesting when Musk and his ilk try to sell dystopia to consumers as if it’s a good thing. The guy “invents” a bus that will probably result in “hundreds of crashes” and “dozens of deaths,” allegedly steals a famous artist’s work, gives it a slightly embellished art deco dustbuster design, and we’re supposed to swoon? To steal a thought from another seminal work of fiction, “As if.”