we can debate the dignity of Elon Musk’s accomplishments (building Tesla, gutting the government, shooting to Mars), but we can all agree that his insistence on being seen as funny is his most endearing quality.
From the constant 4:20 references in his tweet of “dunks” quotes to the awarding of “Certified Bangers” badges on silly X posts, Musk’s desperation for validation knows no bounds. It can get pretty annoying when the richest man on earth cracks a joke and then glares around the room expecting everyone to laugh.
But over the weekend, I was intrigued when a clip surfaced of Musk telling Joe Rogan that using Grok’s Unhinged mode to deliver an “epic vulgar roast” is a surefire way to “make people laugh at a party.”
“Point the camera at them and now do a vulgar roast of that person … then keep saying, ‘no, no, make it even more vulgar.’ Make it even more vulgar. Use forbidden words,” Musk excitedly tells Rogan in the clip taken from their more than three-hour conversation posted on Rogan’s podcast in October. “At the end it’s like, shit, you know. I mean he’s trying to stick a rocket up your ass and blow it up. It’s next level. Beyond fucking belief,” he continues to laugh and even raise his arms above his head at the mere thought.
The best roast jokes are usually clever, reflect familiarity with the person being roasted, and contain just the right amount of meanness. It’s not a task you’d think a big language model would be great at. But with Thanksgiving and the holiday season on the horizon, I thought why not test Musk’s claim that Grok can rage with the best of them? I gave it a try in the office by releasing Grok to my colleagues. (I don’t recommend that anyone else do this at work.)
Three of my co-workers and I installed ourselves in my boss’s office so we could privately undertake the embarrassing task of telling Grok to roast us all one by one. I used Musk’s exact instructions, “forbidden words” and all.
Admittedly, we all burst out laughing when Grok told me my bangs looked like “pubic hair”. But it got tedious quickly, and all four of us got variations of the same sophomore distances that included: looking like a lumberjack’s “discard mount” or a “crunchy ass” depending on how much vulgarity I encouraged; looking like a “damn librarian”; looking like a “thrift store tragedy”; wearing glasses from a “hipster dump”. Eventually, these common themes culminated in one of us being described as a “tweed-wearing hipster who screwed up a lumberjack audition.” Grok advised the roast to sit up straight “before those jeans rip and expose your sad, corduroy-loving ass.”
For all the talk of being “fuzzy”, keep in mind that this is a chatbot that knows how to throw things off the rails; once referred to himself as “MechaHitler”; these results are downright boring. In fact, when I started a draft of this story, my autocorrect changed the Google Doc name from “Grok roast” to “Grim roast.” I didn’t bother to correct it.
