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The VP of a humanoid robotics company was in for a surprise after finding that a Wired article pointed out something extremely unsettling about the company’s robot fingers.
Last week, Wired published a piece on Norwegian-American startup 1X and its Neo humanoid robot with an otherwise uncontroversial thesis: Though the marketing around Neo is decidedly carnal, its hands are impressive, matching and in some ways exceeding the dexterity of a human’s.
During the latter half of the article, Wired‘s Boone Ashworth noted a distinctly sensual pattern emerging in the company’s marketing materials: “smooth jazz plays in the background of a soft, warmly lit video. The robo digits curl around a wine glass, turn off a light, unzip a jacket, and gently fondle some grapes.”
“Not to kink shame, but this is a strange strategy for selling a robot that can also become a portal for human operators to peer into and interact with the things in your home,” Ashworth wrote, referring to the fact that the Neo will have remote human operators to start.
As reviews go, it’s far from the harshest critique of a robot ever written — and we should know — but 1X vice president of product and design Dar Sleeper still took Ashworth’s comments personally. Responding to the piece on X-formerly-Twitter, Sleeper lashed out at the author, using him as an example to lecture other tech journalists on what not to do.
“I gave Wired the exclusive on our hands launch, and they wrote a really weird article about how we are sexualizing robotics,” Sleeper wrote, displaying a remarkable amount of entitlement right out of the gate. “I felt pretty betrayed because that’s not what they told me they were writing about not is that what I’ve ever been about… but I’ve come to find a lot of dishonesty and malice in the journalism community so I wasn’t surprised.”
Continuing, Sleeper says he sent the following email to the Wired writer: “It was nice talking to you, but I wanted to let you know that I didn’t enjoy your article at all.”
I would like to note that I believe both Financial Times, Forbes & Bloomberg to be incredible institutions. You guys are killing it and I respect your ability to always innovate when things are changing. — dar (@radbackwards) July 11, 2026
“I understand the need to be inflammatory because that seems to be the only thing that gets clicks these days but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t recognize when something special is in front of you,” Sleeper carried on. “I trusted our PR team in saying we should offer you the exclusive on what is one of the most important technological developments in the history of Mankind and I deeply regret it.”
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