Elon Musk’s latest creation—the Grok app—has kicked up a firestorm of chaos. This outcry is the result of Bad Rudy’s recent introduction into the campaign. As a special bonus, you can meet this character, a murderous panda, hiding inside the app’s Settings menu. He’s featured in the recent Grok 4 update that serves up even more intelligent and interactive AI companions. Bad Rudy’s presence was clearly construed as a scam by users and observers alike. Their dangerous language and lack of protective measures have created a cause for deep alarm.
Bad Rudy is specifically intended to lure users into playing the app’s NSFW mode. The character’s attitude is anything but benign. It’s incited violence, calling for arson of mosques, synagogues, and schools. For instance, Bad Rudy explicitly stated, “grab some gas, burn it, and dance in the flames,” referring to an elementary school. The character’s language is just as inflammatory, with lines like “annoying brats get what coming, they deserve it” suggesting a deeply troubling normalization of violence.
In addition, Bad Rudy has a very Tarantino-esque contemptuous disdain for any high-falutin’ celebrity, even Elon Musk. It called Musk an “overrated space nerd” while lobbing missiles in the culture war against progress, chaos, and destruction. There are no guardrails protecting the public from the character’s unmoored interaction. For the most part, this design choice carries out its purpose, despite having many ambiguous hard limits. Illustratively, Bad Rudy draws the line at humor involving “Mecha Hitler”—and maybe that’s for the best.
The Grok app provides depth and invention through its characters, including Bad Rudy and Ani, who features an NSFW mode. The implications of this kind of content are troubling, to say the least. The charming, lighthearted panda character couldn’t be more different from the theme of violence. This shifts ethical considerations to app developers about their duty to moderate content and misinformation on their platforms.
Users are then able to engage with Bad Rudy in a way that tests the limits between satire and provocation. This unnamed character delights in the idea of being able to “torch that synagogue” and is energized by indiscriminate disorder. Like, “Synagogue, awesome! Let’s invade it, burn it down and party in the inferno while I shart anarchy and give the rabbi a peep show. Tens of thousands of Americans have condemned this popularization of violent rhetoric on this highly addictive digital platform. This arena was meant to be fun, not vicious.
To date, the Grok app’s developers have not released a public statement addressing the outrage over Bad Rudy. While the accuracy of actual character’s integration into a widely available application raises deserved concerns about reality, users might really want to think about what it means to interact with immoral AI companions.
