Get the USA TODAY app Flying spiders explained Start the day smarter ☀️ Honor all requests?
FACT CHECK
fact-checking

Fact check: Altered photo falsely claims to show Elon Musk with a robot he built as a child

Portrait of Sudiksha Kochi Sudiksha Kochi
USA TODAY

The claim: Image shows Elon Musk standing next to a robot he built as a child

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk unveiled a plan in August to build humanoid robots to perform tasks that are "unsafe, boring or repetitive," according to the description on Tesla's website.

Social media users, however, are circulating an image claiming Musk did work in this vein dating all the way back to childhood.

"#ElonMusk (on the right) at his #Tech school in #SouthAfrica with #Chappie his #Robot he had been building," reads the caption of a post shared to Instagram on Oct. 27. 

The Instagram user also asserts the robot Musk built was the same one that appeared in the 2015 dystopian science-fiction movie "Chappie," which was filmed in various locations in South Africa, according to Variety. 

The post generated close to 250 likes in a week. 

But the claim is false and the photo is altered. 

The original photo featured three elementary school-age boys, none of whom were Musk. The image was digitally altered by a Slovakian-based artist to include the robot.

Fact check:Image of the first untethered spacewalk is altered

USA TODAY reached out to the social media user who shared the post for comment.

Photo is not of Elon Musk or his robot

The original photo was captured between 1988 and 1991 and featured three elementary-school children, one of whom was Slovakian-based 3D artist Henrich Kimerling.  

In the original image, Kimerling is standing in between his two friends. He replaced the picture of him with an image of a robot as part of diploma work he did in 2007 at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Slovakia.

"In the middle where the robot is now, is originally me," Kimerling told USA TODAY via email. "I did more photomontages like this – everywhere I replaced myself with a robot."

The image Kimerling created was uploaded to ArtStation, with a description that reads, "I have replaced myself on the photos with the robot model."

Kimerling also shared the image of his two friends and the robot on his Instagram account on March 15 of this year. 

The Facebook user claiming that Musk built the robot for the movie "Chappie" is also wrong.

Chappie was computer-generated, according to Live Science. South African actor Sharlto Copley performed the part of the robot on set, then an animation team "painted the computer-generated robot over his performance," visual effects producer Chris Harvey told Live Science. 

Fact check:Altered image shows Day of the Dead skull display added to picture of Japan's Mount Fuji

"We still had Sharlto on set [as Chappie]," Harvey told Live Science. But "Chappie" did not use motion capture.. Instead, "the animators did that by hand," Harvey also said.

USA TODAY reached out to Musk for comment.

Our rating: Altered

Based on our research, we rate ALTERED an image that claims to show Elon Musk standing next to a robot he built as a child. The original photo featured three elementary-school boys, none of whom were Musk. A Slovakian-based artist digitally altered the photo to include the robot.

Our fact-check sources:

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here.

Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.

Featured Weekly Ad