GoKawiilSign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Email address Sign Up Thank you!
Remember how Elon Musk vowed that his AI Grok would make an anti-woke, “historically accurate” version of the Odyssey?
Well, he ended up throwing together a whole contest around it — and the winner of the first place prize of $100,000 is, as you probably expected, laughable nonsense.
The problems run deep. The Cyclops Polyphemus is depicted with three eyes, which feels disqualifying. And just a few cuts later, the famously monocular giant is at least four times as large as he was before. The other creatures and gods look like something out of a mobile game; Poseidon emerges from the sea appearing conspicuously cartoonish and impossibly muscled, before smashing Odysseus’s ship and his crew of photorealistic, ripped men.
Half the dialog is delivered in dramatic whispers with the same cadence. The fight scenes are cut to disguise the actual moments of impact, in the same way real B-movies do with aging action stars.
There are some shots here and there that look convincing enough, if you can overlook their bland aesthetic. But this AI “film” suffers the same tragic flaw that all AI films do: their component clips fail to coalesce into a coherent whole. It doesn’t do much on the “historically accurate” front, either; some of the Greek soldiers are clearly wearing the armor donned by Roman legionnaires.
Nonetheless, its creator Nem Perez declared that “this is ‘The Odyssey’ as Homer intended,” before calling it his “most intricate work to date.” He also labeled the video, in oxymoronic fashion, a “5-minute epic.”
This is "The Odyssey" as Homer intended. My longest, most intricate work to date. I pushed @grok @imagine to its absolute limits to create this 5-minute epic.
What bothered me most about the recent adaptation was the omission of the Phaeacians and Princess Nausicaa, whom… https://t.co/awYW6Hu4W8 pic.twitter.com/hJHOgdkEec — Nem Perez (@NemPerez) August 31, 2026
... continue reading