Elon Musk announced in July that he intended to use his AI tool “Grok Imagine” to produce a “historically accurate” AI-generated film version of Homer’s Odyssey. The reason: the tech billionaire was upset with Christopher Nolan’s latest cinematic adaptation, which featured Lupita Nyong’o, a Black actress, and trans actor Elliot Page — something he deemed too woke. He reportedly wrote on X, “Nolan desecrates Homer to fit the woke rules you need to win an Oscar.”
Watch Episode 1 of our Odyssey series made with Grok Imagine.
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/xpgpkqSCpqGrok Imagine (@imagine) October 23, 2026
Now he has posted a seven-minute video on his social platform that is meant to inaugurate a full, purely AI-generated adaptation of the epic. The short film is described by Grok Imagine as “Episode 1 of our Odyssey series.”
While Nolan’s adaptation has earned great acclaim from critics and audiences and has also been praised by classicists for its mythological depth, the response to Musk’s AI alternative has been more reserved to negative. Trade outlets concede that the seven-minute clip occasionally displays convincing visual surfaces, but fault it for stiff facial expressions, wooden dialogue, and a lack of a clear artistic stance. “But hey, at least all the characters have a Musk-approved skin color, while the narrator speaks with a British accent that will sound familiar to anyone who has played a fantasy video game or watched a generic Hollywood epic in the past 25 years,” a TechCrunch piece quipped.
That the AI film will be “historically accurate,” as Musk promised, is itself a matter of doubt. After all, how can that goal be achieved in a story that isn’t a factual historical account but a mythic epic? Classical scholars note that the AI imagery shows warriors wearing gleaming, anatomically styled muscle armor and Corinthian helmets; these are historically about 600 to 800 years after the era Homer set, i.e., the 12th century BCE. The architecture is also criticized as anachronistic for the period, as are the ships, which resemble Roman galleys more than ancient vessels.
Musk has a notorious reputation for transphobia. The backdrop is the coming-out of his daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson, whom he publicly attacked for being transgender, accusing her of being infected by a “woke mind virus.” He even declared her dead in 2024, as TheColu.mn reported. Her reply: “I look pretty good for a dead bitch.” In the current US election cycle, Musk is spending enormous sums on the Republican campaign (TheColu.mn berichtete).
