Viewers have described Elon Musk’s AI-generated adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey as “pure garbage” after Grok Imagine released its first seven-minute episode, three months after the billionaire promised a full-length film that would be “historically accurate and true to the art of Homer”.
The seven-minute episode of the Grok Imagine project released on X, formerly Twitter, was stated to be a “creative collaboration” with Wonder Studios and director Dev Walker, both of whom specialise in AI filmmaking.
Musk first announced the project in July, days after Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of the Greek epic opened in cinemas.
He had previously criticised the casting, particularly the decision to cast Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy and Elliot Page as Sinon.
“Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer,” Musk wrote on X, along with a three-minute AI-generated clip created by another user depicting a scene between Odysseus and the nymph Calypso.
Watch Episode 1 of our Odyssey series made with Grok Imagine.
— Grok Imagine (@imagine) October 23, 2026
Let us know in the comments if you'd like a full breakdown of how it was done!
Creative collaboration with @WonderStudiosX and director Dev Walker @glumlot_ pic.twitter.com/xpgpkqSCpq
Nolan’s The Odyssey, which opened in cinemas on 17 July, follows Odysseus (Matt Damon) as he attempts to return home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, encountering mythical creatures and dangerous obstacles along the way, while his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) fends off suitors and their son Telemachus (Tom Holland) searches for him.
The ensemble cast also includes Robert Pattinson as the suitor Antinous, Zendaya as Athena, Samantha Morton as Circe, and Charlize Theron as Calypso.
Musk also accused Nolan of “desecrating Homer” to meet what he called the “woke rules required to win an Oscar”.
The seven-minute long clip Musk released opens with Odysseus, preparing to sail for Troy. Penelope hands him a small wooden horse figurine to bring back home to their infant son, and the footage then cuts between the Greek army preparing for battle, fighting at Troy and scenes of Telemachus growing up and training in combat.
All of the characters in the clip are white and bear the hallmarks of AI-generated video, appearing with perfect teeth and airbrushed skin. The characters also speak English rather than ancient Greek, contrary to Musk’s claim that his film would be “true to the art of Homer”.
Only Odysseus is identified by name in the clip, leaving viewers unfamiliar with Homer’s epic to work out who the other characters are and what roles they play in the story.
Viewers have mostly responded derisively to Musk’s version, with one person on X writing: “If this is what the richest man on the planet can come up with, I can safely say AI movies won’t be replacing actual movies anytime soon.”
“What’s great about this is it shows you how little AI understands art or humans. You really have to have no taste to like this,” wrote another.
“Pure garbage. As expected. Elon Musk has no taste,” wrote one X user.
One person asked why “AI video content [has] that weird disoriented motion of everything seeming underwater/not moving right”, while another points out that “the characters are straight up just AI Game of Thrones characters”.
Nolan’s film became a record-breaking hit, eventually surpassing $1.7bn at the global box office.
Universal Pictures announced in September that the film had overtaken Jurassic World to become the studio’s highest-grossing release of all time, with worldwide earnings of $1.685bn at that point.
The Odyssey set a record for Nolan’s biggest opening weekend, taking $264.1m worldwide, and also went on to become the highest-grossing release in IMAX history, earning $289m through the format by August.
Nolan has largely dismissed the criticism surrounding his film, saying that debates on historical accuracy before anyone had seen the film were “irrelevant”.
“These conversations that happen before people see the film – they’re always irrelevant, because no one having them knows what the film actually is yet,” he told The Telegraph.
Nolan compared artificial intelligence to the Trojan horse, used by the Greeks to infiltrate the city of Troy at the end of the Trojan War.
“I think AI is a Trojan horse that everybody knows the Greeks are inside. It’s a transparent horse, it’s made of glass. Everybody can see what’s going on inside of there,” he told French journalist Hugo Travers, in a YouTube interview for HugoDécrypte.
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