Elon Musk Said Grok’s Roasts Would Be ‘Epic’ at Parties—So I Tried It on My Coworkers
We can debate The value of Elon Musk’s accomplishments – building Tesla, gutting government, aiming for Mars – but we can all agree that his insistence on being seen as funny is his most irritating quality.
From 4:20’s constant references to his tweet quote “dunks” to awarding “Certified Bangers” badges to idiotic X-rated posts, Musk’s desperation for validation knows no bounds. It can get pretty annoying when the richest man in the world makes a joke and then looks around the room awkwardly waiting for 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 dirty roast” is a surefire way to “really make people laugh at a party.”
“Point the camera at them, and now do a dirty roast of this person…and then keep saying, ‘No, no, make it even more vulgar. Use forbidden words,'” Musk excitedly tells Rogan in the clip from their more than three-hour conversation posted on Rogan’s podcast in October. “Eventually it’s like, holy shit, you know. I mean, it’s trying to stick a rocket up your ass and make it explode. This is the next level. Beyond all fucking belief,” he continues, laughing and even raising his arms above his head at the mere thought.
The best roast jokes tend to be clever, reflect a familiarity with the person being roasted, and contain just the right amount of meanness. This is not a task for which one would think that a large language model would be excellent. But, with Thanksgiving and the holiday season on the horizon, I figured why not test Musk’s claim that Grok can deliver a foul-mouthed razz with the best of them? I tested it in the office by unleashing Grok on my colleagues. (I don’t recommend anyone else do this at work.)
Three of my colleagues and I settled into my boss’s office so I could privately undertake the embarrassing task of telling Grok to roast us all one by one. I used Musk’s exact instructions, “banned words” and all.
Admittedly, we all burst out laughing when Grok told me my bangs looked like “pubic hair.” But it quickly became tedious, the four of us were treated to variations of the same sophomore speeches, including: looking like a lumberjack “pile of trash” or a “crusty asshole” depending on the level of vulgarity I encouraged; looking like a “fucking librarian”; resembling a “thrift store tragedy”; wearing glasses from a “hipster dump”. Eventually, these common themes resulted 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 about being “bothered,” keep in mind that this is a chatbot that knows how to derail things; he once called himself “MechaHitler” – these results are downright boring. In fact, when I started a draft of this story, my autocorrect changed the Google Doc name from “Roasted Grok” to “Roasted Grim.” I didn’t bother to correct it.
