We are able to debate the worthiness of Elon Musk’s accomplishments—increase Tesla, hollowing out the federal government, capturing for Mars—however we are able to all agree that his insistence on being seen as humorous is his most grating high quality.
From the fixed 4:20 references to his quote tweet “dunks” to awarding “Licensed Bangers” badges to crazy X posts, Musk’s desperation for validation is aware of no bounds. It might get fairly annoying when the richest man on earth makes a joke after which awkwardly eyes the room ready for everybody to snicker.
However over the weekend, I used to be intrigued when a clip emerged of Musk telling Joe Rogan that utilizing Grok’s Unhinged Mode to ship an “epic vulgar roast” is a surefire option to “make folks actually snicker at a celebration.”
“Level the digicam at them, and now do a vulgar roast of this individual … then maintain saying, ‘no, no, make it much more vulgar. Use forbidden phrases,’” Musk excitedly tells Rogan within the clip taken from their three-hour-plus dialog printed on Rogan’s podcast in October. “Ultimately it is like, holy fuck, you already know. I imply it’s attempting to jam a rocket up your ass and have it explode. It’s subsequent degree. Past fucking perception,” he continues, chuckling and even elevating his arms above his head on the mere thought.
One of the best roast jokes are typically sensible, replicate a familiarity with the individual being roasted, and include simply the correct quantity of imply. It’s not a process one would suppose a big language mannequin can be nice at. However, with Thanksgiving and vacation season on the horizon, I figured why not take a look at Musk’s declare that Grok can ship a foul-mouthed razz with the very best of them? I gave it a take a look at spin on the workplace by turning Grok free on my colleagues. (I don’t advocate anybody else do that at work.)
Three of my coworkers and I arrange store in my boss’s workplace so I might privately undertake the embarrassing process of telling Grok to roast all of us one after the other. I used Musk’s actual directions, “forbidden phrases” and all.
Admittedly, all of us burst out laughing when Grok informed me my bangs appeared like “pubic hair.” Nevertheless it obtained tedious quick, with all 4 of us getting variations of the identical sophomoric disses together with: wanting like a lumberjack’s “discard pile” or “crusty asshole” relying on the quantity of vulgarity I inspired; wanting like a “goddamn librarian”; wanting like a “thrift retailer tragedy”; carrying glasses from a “hipster’s landfill.” Ultimately, these widespread themes culminated in one in every of us being described as a “tweed-wearing hipster who fucked up a lumberjack audition.” Grok suggested the roastee to sit up “earlier than these denims rip open and expose your unhappy, corduroy-loving ass.”
For all of the discuss of being “unhinged”—be mindful it is a chatbot that is aware of how you can take issues off the rails; it as soon as referred to itself as “MechaHitler”—these outcomes are downright boring. In actual fact, once I began a draft of this story, my autocorrect modified the Google Doc identify from “Grok roast” to “Grim roast.” I didn’t trouble correcting it.

