Powered by GPT-6, Unitree humanoid robots master painting, chess without training, says CEO

Robots developed by Chinese humanoid maker Unitree Robotics can now paint pictures and play chess without any prior training, relying on frontier AI models to navigate complex physical tasks, according to founder and CEO Wang Xingxing.

Speaking on Thursday at the China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai, Wang said Unitree’s machines, powered by OpenAI’s GPT-6, were capable of executing intricate robotic sequences, such as dynamically replacing brush water and blending pigments, guided purely by real-time model inference.

“The precision required to change pigments without error is quite high,” Wang said. “Seeing it perform at this level with zero training was truly stunning.”

While Unitree displayed video clips of its robots painting during the presentation, it did not conduct a live demonstration on stage.

Still, the remarks highlight how China’s leading robotics firms are using cutting-edge AI models to accelerate physical automation. They followed comments Wang made last month, when he said that GPT-6 had pulled forward the industry’s breakthrough timeline to “within one or two years”.

He suggested that next year’s GPT-7 could crack core challenges in embodied artificial intelligence.

Translating AI commands into precise physical actions remains an uphill battle, however, according to Wang. He warned at the expo that the industry’s biggest hurdle was no longer digital reasoning or planning but closing a “last-millimetre” mechanical gap.

“The fundamental problem right now is the alignment error between the AI model’s inputs and outputs,” Wang said, projecting that the industry would overcome this physical bottleneck within one or two years.

To speed up that transition, Unitree was developing a “self-evolving” feedback loop to allow humanoid robots to write code, run simulations and autonomously improve their real-world performance, Wang said.

Wang’s bullish outlook was matched by other industry executives at the expo. Wang Qian, founder of Chinese robotics start-up X Square Robot, said embodied AI was on the verge of a watershed leap, pushing back against forecasts that mass adoption was half a decade away.

“We believe we are very close to a ‘GPT moment’ for embodied AI – highly likely within a year or so,” the X Square Robot founder said. “We hope to see robots building robots, and chips manufacturing chips … achieving true artificial intelligence in the physical world.”

Chip suppliers, however, struck a more cautious tone, pointing to constraints below the software layer.

Wang Dong, co-founder of domestic graphics processing unit designer Moore Threads, warned that embodied AI development continued to lag expectations due to severe data scarcity and crippling hardware costs.

Collecting real-world interaction data remained difficult, so developers were being forced to rely heavily on synthetic training sets, he said, adding that Moore Threads was making efforts to supply its own chips and solutions to domestic robotics developers as Nvidia chips were extremely expensive.