Musk releases AI-made Odyssey after criticizing Nolan's film

Elon Musk has released the first episode of his own version of “The Odyssey,” created with the Grok Imagine neural network. He criticized Christopher Nolan’s film back in the summer – he was unhappy, for example, with Black actress Lupita Nyong’o playing Helen of Troy – and promised at the time to make a “historically accurate” version.

The first part appeared on the social network X as a seven-minute episode made together with the London startup Wonder Studios. Musk wants to post the whole film by the end of the year, split into short episodes. The episode shows Odysseus before leaving for the Trojan War and his departure from his native Ithaca, the ten-year war, and the hero with his son’s small wooden horse set to ominous music.

How much the AI version cost

According to Wonder Studios co-founder Xavier Collins, the episode was made in under two weeks by a team of three, including director Dev Walker from the US. The cost is estimated at tens of thousands of dollars, although it is unclear how much of that went specifically on video generation. Nolan’s version cost $250 million (CZK 5.4 billion), took 91 days to shoot with a large crew and grossed $1.8 billion (CZK 39 billion) in cinemas.

Despite Musk’s criticism, the creators of the new version are fans of the summer blockbuster. Collins told The Guardian that he loves Nolan’s film and that they were given no instructions to work “against the grain.” “One of the world’s best pioneering labs gave us the chance to work on one of the greatest stories ever told,” he said.

Reaction from viewers and critics

Film critic Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian faulted the AI “Odyssey” for frozen images, monotonous robotic voices and a lack of emotion. In his view, the project shows that AI can sharply cut the cost of audiovisual work, but cheapness alone does not guarantee quality.

So far the episode on the Grok Imagine account has gathered 7.4 million views and plenty of harsh responses. A columnist at The Daily Telegraph wrote that his “eyeballs twitch” and called the version a “shoddy horror.” Some viewers noted that the film does not look historically accurate: the ships look more Viking than Greek, and the clothing seems medieval.

Collins assured viewers that Wonder wants to make the second episode better than the first and will respond to the criticism: “We will look at all the comments and everything that could have been done better, and try to improve. The goal is for the next episode to be noticeably better than the last.”

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz