If you closely follow tech news on social media, chances are you’ve seen a video claiming to show Xiaomi’s fully automated smartphone factory. The clip, widely shared on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and other platforms, claims that the Chinese tech giant has recently launched a futuristic facility that runs 24×7, operates in complete darkness as it is run entirely by robots that do not require light to see, has no production staff, and manufactures one smartphone every second.

The post also claims that the video is from a Xiaomi factory in Changping near Beijing and it is a huge factory spread over approximately 81000 square meters. In the video, robotic arms can be seen assembling equipment, automated vehicles can be seen carrying components across the factory floor, and machines appear to coordinate production with little or no human involvement. These clips are going viral, with people debating whether machines taking over humans’ jobs is finally becoming a reality.

the only problem? This is not a video of a real factory. Instead, it is a concept video that Xiaomi showed in 2020. The company released these videos to demonstrate the potential of automation, rather than to confirm the existence of a fully autonomous, human-free production facility operating at scale.

This video present on YouTube has now gone viral. The reason for this appears to be the upcoming job crisis caused by AI. While white-collar jobs are already under threat due to AI, people probably took the help of the old Xiaomi video to highlight that even blue-collar factory jobs are not safe in the age of AI and robots.

Is Xiaomi Dark Factory real?

Now, if the viral video is a mashup of clips from a six-year-old concept video, what about the existence of Xiaomi’s dark factory? There is no clarity as to why such a factory could possibly exist, only that it is unlikely to be as dark or automated as shown in the concept video.

Instead, to understand what this Xiaomi factory could be – which is inhabited by robots and uses automated production processes – we need to watch another video that Xiaomi released in 2023.

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that year, Xiaomi showed a video of a functionally automated – but not human-free – factory. In the video which is also available on YouTube, Xiaomi showed off an automated assembly line capable of producing more than one million flagship smartphones annually in a “lights-out” plant. Xiaomi said the factory relies on advanced robotics, AI-powered quality inspection systems and proprietary manufacturing software.

Despite this confirmation, many details remain unknown. Xiaomi has not publicly clarified the extent of human involvement in overseeing operations, handling maintenance, managing logistics or performing final quality checks. The company also has not supported existing viral social media claims that the facility produces one phone per second, operates entirely without human workers, or that it runs continuously without manual intervention.

Humans are needed in a lights out factory

Interestingly, the idea of ​​a “lights-out” factory is not new. Although such factories are designed to run with very few people on site, they are not completely human-free. Maintenance, software updates, handling errors, and managing the supply chain still require human involvement. Smartphone manufacturing, which requires high precision and involves complex components, is particularly difficult to automate from start to finish.

Some lights-out factories may operate without workers for long periods of time, sometimes even weeks. But as seen in some of the facilities operated by Fanuc in Japan, they are still not fully automated and they rely on people for planning, maintenance and dealing with unexpected problems.

Coming back to Xiaomi’s factory, the viral claims seem to stitch together real visuals, old concept footage, and select references to the company’s 2023 announcement. In other words, Xiaomi has some kind of facilities where some operations are automated and managed by robots. But a huge campus that is human-free and where various robots work 24×7 to produce one phone every second is still probably only half the truth.