I thought it was less about "creepy" and more about the military aspect. It's hard to "don't be evil" when you have a subsidiary building what people were describing (hyperbolically) as some kind of precursor to the Terminator. If they put some big anime eyes and a cute tail on the new one, rather than an empty face place, it'd probably go down just fine.

Edit: Boston Dynamics also didn't help themselves with the "dog kicking" video. It (sort of) looks like a dog, and people were kicking it (well, not really, they were pushing it with their feet to show it good it was at balance). Obviously it's just a machine, but a lot of people saw some dudes kicking a dog.