Grimes' AI toy will help raise your kids right

Meet the other Grok. Not Musk's new chatbot, but an AI-powered toy created by his girlfriend

Say hello to Grok, a plush toy rocket that can talk and won’t blow up on its launchpad. Source: Washington Post/Curio.

Here’s yet more proof that we are living in the most absurd timeline imaginable.

Singer-songwriter Grimes, aka Claire Boucher, aka the mother of just over 27 percent of Elon Musk’s children [1], wants to teach your kids about religion and other stuff using an AI-powered rocket-shaped plush toy named Grok.

In a long career of writing weird sentences, that may just be the weirdest one I have ever written.

If Grok sounds eerily familiar, that’s because it’s the same name as her not-husband’s new anti-woke/actually woke AI chatbot. Apparently the toy was named before the bot, but Elon didn’t give a damn and used the name anyway. Per Taylor Lorenz of the Washington Post:

But the toy has no relationship with Musk’s AI start-up, which also is called Grok. Curio holds the trademark on the name, and the two AI products are totally unaffiliated, Curio says. The name Grok was devised by Grimes and the Curio team, who said the word was a shortening of the word Grocket, which was coined because Grimes’ children are exposed to a lot of rockets through their father’s ownership of SpaceX.

Does the phrase “Grimes’ children are exposed to a lot of rockets” sound disturbing to you? Because it does to me.

It seems the company Curio was born out of a Tweet (or whatever they’re calling them over there now) by someone who goes by the name “Roon,” to which Grimes then replied.

Again, is anyone else creeped out by this? “Mommy, the toys are talking to me in my sleep.” “Don’t worry dear, it’s just the spirit inhabiting Teddy.”

Here is Grimes’ reply:

Roon? Princess Irulen? [2] “Culture ship mind in a teddy bear”? What the f**k happened to these people as kids that made them turn out this way? Did no one ever think of calling Child Protective Services?

Curio’s Grok will communicate with OpenAI via WiFi to generate speech, using Grimes’ voice. Here’s a snippet of conversation between Roon, Grok, Grimes, and Curio co-founder Sam Eaton.

And then there’s this little snippet between Grimes and Curio co-founder Misha Sallee:

The idea behing Grok the Toy, according to Princess Irulen®, is to reduce the amount of time kids spend staring at screens and replace it with an AI that was trained on “a bunch of … weird free thinking kind of stuff” written by Grimes herself. Because exposing your kids to someone who thinks that Midjourney has replaced the Pope [3] and that fan fiction is “really important” is so much better than handing them an iPad so they can watch Blues Clues.

According to Curio, Grok (and its plush toy siblings Grem and Gabbo) [4] will be customizable by parents, so they can have some control over what the artificial spirit inhabiting their toddler’s favorite toy will say. Per the Post:

As the product evolves, Curio’s founders want to give parents even more control over Grok’s conversations. “If this is going to be a guest in the house, we want parents to have influence over what the toy believes,” Eaton said. “Maybe your family is vegetarian or religious and you want to influence [conversation around those topics]. Or maybe your kid has certain interests, like dinosaurs, and you want to put them in there.”

I am imagining what Grimes’ and Elon’s version of Grok the Toy will be telling its kids about the woke virus and all those nasty Nazi-hating advertisers.

Yet again I am amazed at, well, all of this really, but especially the levels of arrogance and naivete from people who apparently don’t occupy the same planet as the rest of us. Does no one in Silicon Valley go to the movies? This scenario almost never ends well.

Yet I am sure there will be thousands of new parents willing to fork out $99 for Grok and its plush siblings. They are the same people who believe Elon is a genius and seem to have confused him with a fictional character from the Marvel movies.

I cannot imagine how their kids will turn out. But maybe Princess Irulen® can.

Would you buy a plush toy from these people? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

[1] Their three children (out of Musk’s total of 11) are named Tau Techno Mechanus, Exa Dark Sideræl Musk, and X Æ A-Xii. Not kidding. Thus answering the age-old question, what kind of asshole would name their kids Tau Techno Mechanus, Exa Dark Sideræl Musk, and X Æ A-Xii?

[2] The registered trademark symbol is what really sends it over the top.

[3] Presumably Grimes is talking about that now famous picture of Pope Francis in a puffy white jacket that was generated using Midjourney. But it’s entirely possible she believes Midjourney really is the Supreme Pontiff.

[4] Per Curio’s Misha Sallee: “Grok is a friendly rocket who loves to dance and can’t fly. Grem is a space alien who’s obsessed with the color pink. Gabbo is a curious, Pinocchio-like figure who’s always looking for new friends.” Grimes is a Loonie who’s short a few Tunes.