Interestingly, that didn't come from the PR department. Hughes is a tenure-track professor whose lab builds unusual flexible robots. They're trying to use LLMs to design special-purpose grippers.[1] That's an interesting idea. Most of the cost in industrial robots is special-purpose end effector tooling. Something that could bang out a design, given "we want to put this thing in there", would be very useful.
Here are some examples of end of arm tooling.[2] Auto plants are full of this stuff, and it's all custom. An automated design system for designing all those one-off items would really speed up retooling assembly lines for a new product. Much of the research in robots involves trying to make more human-like grippers. That may be approaching the problem from the wrong end. Cheap custom tooling designed by AIs and maybe 3D printed may be the way to go.
That an LLM can do something like that is a surprise, but apparently there's been progress.
There's a YC-sized startup opportunity in this.
[1] https://www.epfl.ch/labs/create/
[2] https://eoat.net/tooling/?device=c&keyword=End Of Arm Tooling Grippers