Grok releases the first seven minutes of its AI-generated ‘Odyssey’

Three months after Elon Musk said Grok would ship a full-length, “historically accurate” version of The Odyssey, the company has put out just seven minutes of it. Grok is calling the clip “Episode 1 of our Odyssey series,” which is a very different promise from the one that started all this.

The timing gives the whole thing a little extra charge. Musk had already attacked Christopher Nolan’s upcoming The Odyssey for casting nonwhite and transgender actors, making Nolan an easy contrast case: one man chasing spectacle through machines, the other known for practical filmmaking and, by his own description, a techno-skeptic streak. Nolan’s version shot across six countries with thousands of people involved, then became a big box office hit after its July release.

Grok’s version, made with Wonder Studios and director Dev Walker, is less grand than the marketing implies and less embarrassing than it could have been. Some shots do pass at a glance as real people on a real sea. But the illusion doesn’t last long.

The weak point is the storytelling itself. The voiceover keeps laying down backstory until the thing finally lurches into a procession of bearded faces shouting lines that land with all the grace of a bad fantasy game cutscene. A few images may look almost real, but the piece as a whole has no momentum and no pulse. Even before the seven minutes are up, it starts feeling longer than it is.