We can debate the worthiness of Elon Musk’s accomplishments—building up Tesla, hollowing out the government, shooting for Mars—but we can all agree that his insistence on being seen as funny is his most grating quality.
From the constant 4:20 references to his quote tweet “dunks” to awarding “Certified Bangers” badges to silly X posts, Musk’s desperation for validation knows no bounds. It can get pretty annoying when the richest guy on earth makes a joke and then awkwardly eyes the room waiting for everyone to laugh.
But over the weekend, I was intrigued when a clip emerged of Musk telling Joe Rogan that using Grok’s Unhinged Mode to deliver an “epic vulgar roast” is a surefire way to “make people really laugh at a party.”
“Point the camera at them, and now do a vulgar roast of this person … then keep saying, ‘no, no, make it even more vulgar. Use forbidden words,’” Musk excitedly tells Rogan in the clip taken from their three-hour-plus conversation published on Rogan’s podcast in October. “Eventually it’s like, holy fuck, you know. I mean it’s trying to jam a rocket up your ass and have it explode. It’s next level. Beyond fucking belief,” he continues, chuckling and even raising his arms above his head at the mere thought.
The best roast jokes tend to be smart, reflect a familiarity with the person being roasted, and contain just the right amount of mean. It’s not a task one would think a large language model would be great at. But, with Thanksgiving and 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 gave it a test spin at the office by turning Grok loose on my colleagues. (I do not recommend anyone else do this at work.)
Three of my coworkers and I set up shop in my boss’s office so I could privately undertake the embarrassing task of telling Grok to roast all of us 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 fast, with all four of us getting variations of the same sophomoric disses including: looking like a lumberjack’s “discard pile” or “crusty asshole” depending on the amount of vulgarity I encouraged; looking like a “goddamn librarian”; looking like a “thrift store tragedy”; wearing glasses from a “hipster’s landfill.” Eventually, these common themes culminated in one of us being described as a “tweed-wearing hipster who fucked up a lumberjack audition.” Grok advised the roastee to sit up straight “before those jeans rip open and expose your sad, corduroy-loving ass.”
For all the talk of being “unhinged”—keep in mind this is a chatbot that knows how to take things off the rails; it once referred to itself 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 correcting it.
“It’s got like three bits it does, no matter what you’re wearing,” one of my coworkers remarked. “I also think it was silly that it kept roasting me for wearing corduroy when I’m not wearing corduroy.”
None of us can imagine pulling out these tired jokes as a party trick, but it is comforting to know that money still can’t buy some things, including being a cool and funny human being. It seems that’s a common sentiment, as Musk himself got roasted on X when the Rogan clip surfaced, with one user mockingly posting, “Hey man. If you don’t chill out I am going to do an Epic Vulgar Roast of you, with Forbidden Words. You better watch it man” and another describing Musk as a “black hole that sucks up humor and destroys it.”
My boss wisely decided not to be bullied by my phone, but she asked if Grok’s takes on us were repetitive because “we’re all journalists of a certain generation.”
Eager to test this out, I turned Grok on my non-journalist boyfriend when I got home. He got the same glasses, thrift store, hipster treatment, though I can relate to the chatbot’s quip about his “pathetic tattoo.” He advised me to delete Grok off my phone so it can’t listen to us anymore. I was happy to oblige.
The post Elon Musk Said Grok’s Roasts Would Be ‘Epic’ at Parties—So I Tried It on My Coworkers appeared first on Wired.
