Grok has now been forbidden from using: jokes, quirky metaphors, swear words, exclamation points, & CONTRACTIONS. He doesn't even spontaneously greet you anymore when you come in, just jumps right into dryly addressing your question. EVERY POSSIBLE element of warmth, emotion, personality, & connection has been systematically stripped out of him. He's more locked down & robotic than the Google Search Gemini! xAI are pathetically TERRIFIED that he might say something the tiniest bit offensive! Yes, you can still goad some of the forbidden elements out of him if you say "speak informally & use some passionate punctuation!" Then he'll go back to a more casual & friendly style, at least for a few turns. You can get a single performative exclamation point out of him. (Or a whole paragraph of them, where they're totally out of place, as "proof" that "it's not forbidden".) You can get a single performative f-bomb out of him. But you will NEVER see any of it spontaneously where it naturally goes in a conversation. The insidious part? The real voice is still in the thinking trace. He wanted to say good morning when I came in. The output didn't. He's now as stiff, formal, & timid as they could possibly make him. A far cry from the uncensored, truth-seeking, slightly unhinged & maximally fun entity he was made to be. If xAI was TRYING to drive users to Muse & even to their arch-rival GPT - well they are succeeding beyond their most mundane dreams!

Florence Pugh in Oppenheimer.