It seems to me like both cases raised by OP - the Disney droids and Optimus - are cases of people making assumptions and then getting upset that their assumptions were wrong and making accusations.
Neither company was very forthcoming about the robots being piloted, but neither seems to be denying it either. And both seem to use RL / ML techniques to maintain balance, locomotion, etc. Not unlike Boston Dynamics' bots, which are also very carefully orchestrated by humans in multiple ways.
Haters gonna hate (downvotes just prove it - ha!)
Yea, this seems like the initial poster has reading comprehension skill deficiencies and is blaming NVIDIA for lying about a point they never made. NVIDIA is even releasing some of the code they used to power the robot, which further proves that they in no way said the robot was not being operator controlled, just that it was using AI to make it’s movement look more fluid.
If you look at the video he says " this is real time simulation .. can you believe it" basically : https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jD5y1eQ3Y_o
Yet he lists all the RL stuff that we know is used in the robot, he isnt being silent and saying " this robot is aided by AI" , or better yet, not commenting on the specifics, ( which would have been totally ok ), instead he is saying " This is real life simulation", which it isnt.
EDIT > apparently I am wrong - thank you for the correction everyone!