Elon Musk has been keeping everyone guessing about his love life, but sources exclusively revealed to Page Six that he has been quietly dating hip musician Grimes — who will walk the red carpet with him at Monday’s Met Gala.
A source tells us the pair met around a month ago online, of course, through a joke Musk had planned to tweet but discovered Grimes had already made, dealing with the complications of artificial intelligence.
Thought experiment Roko’s Basilisk considers the hypothesis of a future where AI lords over the world and could punish those who did not help it into existence. His joke was to merge this thought experiment with a pun using “Rococo,” referring to the ornate French 18th century baroque style, perhaps pointing out that both concepts are complex, too extreme and ridiculous.
And while this takes some explaining, arty performer Grimes was already in on the same joke — three years ahead of Musk.
In 2015, she created a character named “Rococo Basilisk” for a video of her song “Flesh Without Blood.” “I don’t know if you’ve heard of Roko’s Basilisk,” she told Fuse. “[This character] is doomed to be eternally tortured by an artificial intelligence, but she’s also kind of like Marie Antoinette.”
“Elon was researching the idea of joking about Rococo Basilisk, and when he saw Grimes had already joked about it, he reached out to her,” says the insider. “Grimes said this was the first time in three years that anyone understood the joke. They were both poking fun at AI.”
Musk is well known for warning of an AI apocalypse, calling it “more dangerous than nukes.”
SpaceX and Tesla founder Musk has been very public in his past fandom for Grimes, whose real name is Claire Boucher. He tweeted out her artsy video with Janelle Monae for the song “Venus Fly” this past March, adding “Best music video art I’ve seen in a while.”
Grimes shot to fame in 2012 with her third studio album, “Visions,” and also put out the critically acclaimed “Art Angels” in 2015. She recently revealed she has clashed with her label 4AD, saying “There’s some srsly f–ked up and crazy s–t going behind the scenes in my career,” but that she will be releasing another album with 4AD, followed by independent music. “I just took a month off, a lot of insane s–t went down and I’m reorienting my life,” she wrote on Instagram. “I have a deep well of s–t this time, like sooo many songs so after my album I’ll be able to consistently release new music.”
She was a double major in psychology and philosophy, with minors in Russian and electro-acoustics before she dropped out of school to follow her music career.
The tech billionaire also tweeted his approval of her Spotify playlist “Go Flex & Psycho.” “Glad ur finally listening to cyberpunk speedwae hahaha,” she responded. “Sounds great riding my cyborg,” he hit back.
Just last week they had another online in-joke. After Musk tweeted a video created from long-exposure photos of a comet, Grimes said “that’s a lot of cocaine,” to which he responded, “Yeah, most people don’t know this, but comets [are] mostly made of cocaine.”
Aside from flaunting their banter online, Musk hinted at his talented Met Gala date on Monday, tweeting “Rococo basilisk,” and a link to the Rococo Wikipedia page.