Humanoid robots may reach the public imagination before they reach the factory floor. A compact machine made by China’s Unitree is already drawing crowds, collecting followers and earning appearance fees—not because it can work independently, but because people find it entertaining.
WIRED describes several online personalities built around the same G1 humanoid. One walks through Polish cities under the name Edward Warchocki; others dance at parties, flirt with pedestrians or celebrate sporting events. Their success offers a revealing preview of how humanoid robots might enter everyday life: first as performers, then perhaps as workers.
The distinction matters. Conversation software can make a machine appear socially capable, while its physical actions may still depend heavily on a human operator. Viral clips show the finished performance, not necessarily the machinery, programming and supervision behind it.
A voice turns hardware into a public character
Edward began as a 40-kilogram machine that reportedly made people uneasy when it moved silently through public spaces. Its Polish owners, Bartosz Idzik and Radosław Grzelaczyk, connected it to a large language model so it could hold live conversations in Polish. Idzik told WIRED that public reactions changed once the robot could talk.
The result became a recognisable character rather than a hardware demonstration. Edward visited Poland’s parliament, appeared with police, travelled outdoors and featured in a widely shared video involving wild boars. Its creators say the account has accumulated more than one million followers and four billion views across social platforms. Those figures are their reported metrics, not an independent measure of the robot’s technical ability.
Similar G1 machines have appeared as Rizzbot in Austin, Bart Robot in New York and Brickell Clanker in Miami. The personas differ, but the underlying product is much the same: a child-sized aluminium humanoid with a dark face panel. Software, styling and human direction supply the personality that audiences experience.
That repeatability is commercially significant. A robot does not need broad intelligence to become useful in entertainment. It needs reliable movement, a compelling character and operators who understand crowds and online distribution.
Lower prices create an entertainment business
Unitree’s position differs from robot makers whose machines remain primarily in laboratories. According to financial disclosures cited by WIRED, the company shipped 5,511 humanoids in 2025 at an average price below $25,000. More than half of its revenue that year came from humanoid deliveries, 43 percent of sales were international, and the company became profitable for the first time. Unitree was also preparing for a Chinese stock-market listing when the source article was published.
Entry prices do not tell the whole story. Unitree lists a basic G1 at $13,500 before shipping, taxes and tariffs, while a US distributor offers it for roughly $19,000. Jake Cooperstein, who operates Brickell Clanker, chose a more customisable educational variation with dexterous hardware at a reported cost of $66,000.
He now charges between $800 and $1,200 an hour for appearances at parties, nightclubs and corporate events, depending on the assignment. That model turns the humanoid into a premium costume, interactive attraction and social-media prop combined. Unitree’s lighter R1, priced at around one-third of the G1’s base cost, could lower the barrier further.
These examples show viable individual businesses, not proof of a mature global market. Revenue from a handful of viral operators cannot establish how many buyers can reproduce their audience or recover the full costs of transport, maintenance, insurance and staffing.
The performance remains ahead of the autonomy
The most important limitation is largely invisible in polished clips. Both Idzik and Cooperstein told WIRED that their robots are usually teleoperated in public. Although the G1 is designed to move through physical environments, the operators fear that a malfunction could injure a bystander. Human supervision therefore remains central to the spectacle.
The machine also arrives with a limited repertoire. Cooperstein’s G1 reportedly included about 20 gestures and 15 dance moves; creating additional movements requires technical work. A language model can improvise dialogue, but fluent speech does not give the body equivalent judgement, balance or safety awareness.
There are regulatory constraints as well. WIRED reports that a US Federal Communications Commission decision announced in July blocks approvals for new Chinese-made humanoids. Previously cleared G1 and R1 models may remain available, but the treatment of future Unitree generations is uncertain, and the company did not comment to WIRED.
For now, the G1’s clearest achievement is social rather than industrial. It demonstrates that an affordable humanoid can attract attention and support an events business even while humans control much of what audiences see. The robot influencer is real; the autonomous worker remains a more demanding proposition.
