Edward Warchocki may sound like an ordinary guy when he chats with you, but he is anything but human. He is a 4-foot-tall humanoid robot from China, and he has become one of the most unlikely celebrities on the internet.
When Edward Warchocki speaks to you, he sounds like a regular person. “Not super intelligent, but very emotional, very easy to make friends with,” says Bartosz Idzik, the man who created him. But when he goes quiet, it is hard to forget what Edward truly is: a 4-foot-tall humanoid robot roaming the streets of Poland.
Six months ago, Idzik and his friend Radosław Grzelaczyk came up with the idea of buying a humanoid robot from China. They named it Edward Warchocki, combining Grzelaczyk’s dog Eddie with the Polish word “warczeć,” which means to growl, and because it sounds like a plausible Polish name. In the first few days of taking Edward out, the robot could not speak, and people were clearly scared of it. Then Idzik, a software developer, connected Edward to a large language model, giving it the ability to hold live conversations in Polish.
“When he started to talk, people loved him. Without talking, it’s just a 40-kilogram machine,” Idzik says.
Edward quickly made friends. It visited the Polish parliament and talked to politicians, hiked up mountains, waded in a lake, and was jokingly arrested by police. In April, a video of Edward chasing away wild boars in Warsaw while carrying a backpack and wearing a Rolex went viral across the globe. By now, Edward has amassed over 1 million followers and 4 billion views across social media.
By 2026, you have likely encountered at least one of these humanoid influencers. There is “Rizzbot,” a robot wearing a cowboy hat that flirts with passersby in Austin. There is “Bart Robot,” which breakdanced with Knicks fans in New York following the team’s historic championship. And there is “Brickell Clanker,” which changed into different jerseys to party with World Cup fans after each match.
Unless you have been paying close attention, you may not have realized that these robots are all the same model: the Unitree G1. This is one of the most readily available and affordable humanoid robots on the global market, made by a Chinese company that is leading the robotics industry. The G1 is about the size of a child, with a hollowed-out face featuring a ring of blue light and light-gray aluminum limbs. It has appeared on America’s Got Talent, demonstrated kung fu, engaged in boxing matches, done parkour, danced at concerts, run with kids, attempted to cook (and failed), streamed with Kai Cenat, begged for money, dated itself, been ordained as a monk in Japan and Korea, and prayed at a mosque in Dubai.
An anonymous shitposter on X put it simply: “This clanker is lit as fuck!”
Unitree is set to go public on the Chinese stock market in about two weeks. The company’s financial disclosure reveals how popular its products have become. Unlike most robot companies whose products are still being tested in labs, more than half of Unitree’s 2025 revenue came from delivering humanoid robots to real customers. It shipped 5,511 humanoids in 2025 at an average price of less than $25,000 each, and 43 percent of all sales came from outside China. The company also became profitable for the first time last year.
“We tested a lot of humanoids, and the G1 was the best for its purpose,” Idzik says. “We are used to China copying other countries, but from the perspective of humanoids, other people should copy China.”
Despite its commercial success, the company and its robots often face intense skepticism. Sure, they can perform attention-grabbing, crowd-pleasing tasks, but can they hold down a traditional job that contributes to the economy, like working on an assembly line or cleaning a house? When will Unitree G1 get a real job?
Jake Cooperstein, a 24-year-old from Miami, says he was inspired by Edward and other accounts to create his own humanoid influencer. In January, he visited the warehouse of a robotics shop in New York and tested the Unitree G1. He was impressed by how easy it was to operate. The next day, he secured an order and paid the deposit.
On Unitree’s website, a basic G1 robot is priced at $13,500, but that is before tariffs, shipping, and taxes. A US distributor lists the robot at about $19,000. Cooperstein was not satisfied with the basic version, however. It does not come with more sophisticated parts like dextrous hands and is prohibited from modification. He instead chose the U5 variation designed for educational buyers, which has more parts and better customization but costs $66,000.
Cooperstein named his G1 robot “Brickell Clanker” after the downtown Miami neighborhood and began taking it out in public to interact with people. Brickell Clanker got its big break by attending World Cup after-parties this summer, changing into different jerseys for Argentina, Brazil, and the US. Today, Cooperstein makes money by charging a fee to bring Brickell Clanker to influencer parties, nightclubs, and corporate events. Rates range from $800 to $1,200 an hour, depending on what the robot needs to do.
Cooperstein recently acquired another robot: a Unitree R1. At almost one-third the base price of the G1, this faster, lighter model is Unitree’s attempt to make humanoids even more affordable. He named the new robot “Lil Clanker.”
It remains unclear whether Cooperstein will be able to keep buying Unitree’s robots. In July, the US Federal Communications Commission announced a ban on new Chinese-made humanoid robots. Models that had already cleared approvals, like the Unitree G1 and R1, are theoretically still allowed, but no one knows for sure. What is certain is that when Unitree releases its next generation of humanoid robots, it will not be able to sell them to the US. Unitree did not respond to a request for comment.
In Europe, Edward Warchocki faces fewer threats. Idzik says MERA Robotics, the company he cofounded with Grzelaczyk, now has a fleet of 20 humanoid robots, most of them Unitree G1. Every robot in Poland shares Edward’s personality, and some operate in the Middle East and Southeast Asia as different influencers.
While the large language model enables the robots to converse freely, their physical movements are still heavily constrained. Both Idzik and Cooperstein say that when they take the robots out now, they are teleoperating them most of the time. Theoretically, the Unitree G1 should be able to move around by itself, but they worry about a malfunction potentially hurting a bystander and creating a safety hazard.
The G1 robot Cooperstein received came with about 20 gestures and 15 dance moves built in. Beyond that, it takes some technical knowledge to program new movements. For example, he taught Brickell Clanker to move its arms in a way that simulates the signature “Viking Row” gesture performed by Norwegian soccer fans this year.
Cooperstein still remembers the first day he took Brickell Clanker to the World Cup fan festival. Hundreds of people, including the press, circled the humanoid and cheered as it danced. “Nobody knows that it’s me controlling it. It seems like I’m blending in with the crowd. I’m just staring out and looking at everybody,” he says, “and I’m like, ‘holy shit, this is the future.'”
The rise of Edward Warchocki and his fellow G1 robots illustrates both the growing accessibility of humanoid robots and the unpredictable ways they can capture public attention. Whether they will graduate from social media stunts to everyday jobs remains an open question, but for now, these 4-foot machines have already made their mark.
