Elon Musk says Grok will create 'historically accurate' AI Odyssey after criticizing Nolan's film

Elon Musk says AI will make a 'historically accurate' Odyssey - here's why that's impossible

Elon Musk has promised that before the year is out, his AI tool Grok Imagine will produce a full-length film of Homer's Odyssey that is, in his words, "historically accurate and true to the art of Homer". The claim, posted on X in July alongside a three-minute AI-generated scene, arrived days after Christopher Nolan's blockbuster version reached cinemas worldwide - a film Musk has spent months attacking for being "woke". Set aside, for a moment, that The Odyssey is a 2,800-year-old poem that includes a witch who turns men into pigs and a one-eyed giant shepherd, to ask a simpler question: accurate to what? There are no photographs of ancient Ithaca. There is no footage of the Trojan shore. What we have is stories, poems, pottery and paint, and, more recently, a century of films that imagined the ancient world for us. That is the only material a generative model has ever seen. So when Grok Imagine - the AI image generator developed by Musk's xAI company - renders antiquity, it is not reaching back into history. It is reaching for the centre of every image already made about it - the most probable ancient warrior, assembled from Gladiator, Troy and 300 and a hundred years of sword-and-sandal cinema. The result will not look like the past. It will look like other films about the past, averaged out by AI. And here is the part that should give anyone bandying about the word "accurate" pause. A machine that reaches for the most probable image does not correct our clichés about antiquity. It concentrates them. Ask it for a classical statue and it will hand you gleaming white marble, because that is how we picture the ancient world. Except the ancient world did not look like that. Greek and Roman sculpture was painted in strong colours - the pristine white marble in our heads is a later idealisation, not the thing itself. An AI model trained on our pictures of the past will reproduce our mistakes about the past - confidently - and give them back to us labelled as truth. That is the opposite of accuracy. It is our own error, upscaled. The real problem This is why "historically accurate" is not really a script problem. It is an image problem. Accuracy on screen is delivered through light, lens, skin, texture, cloth and grain - the hundred deliberate decisions a director of photography agonises over in every frame. A machine makes those decisions too, but it makes them by consensus, by defaulting to the most probable choice. Research on generative AI has already found that it makes individual work feel more creative while making the whole field more similar, everything drifting toward the same middle. The same regression to the mean that flattens prose will flatten the picture. You do not get the accurate past, and you do not get the thrilling lie. You get the average, and the average is where nothing memorable lives. Which brings me to escapism, and to a tension in my own work I am happy to admit. I research and teach sustainable, naturalistic image-making - stripping away artifice, working with available light. But I have also argued, including in a TED talk, that escapism matters, and that realism is often its enemy. Take everything excessive and dangerous out of James Bond and you remove the reason anyone watches. Nolan's Odyssey is not trying to be accurate. It is trying to be exciting - and excitement is a decision. It is a point of view, a piece of the filmmaker put deliberately on the screen. Heightening is a choice about what to exaggerate, and a choice is exactly what an average cannot make. A machine that lives at the mean can smooth, but it cannot heighten. So the "exciting" AI blockbuster arrives with the one quality excitement depends on already removed. There is a reason the AI clips flooding our feeds feel flavourless even when they are technically clean. It is not that the tools are young and will improve. It is that averaging is what they do. Watch a real performer and you are watching a human being decide - take a risk, make a choice you might not have made - in front of you. That is the thing we actually go to films for, and it is precisely the thing an average has no way to contain. Whether audiences keep noticing is the open question. The appetite to make this work is real, because it is cheap. The appetite to watch it is the thing nobody has tested yet. And the unease many people already feel watching AI slop and struggling to say why it repels them, is not naivety. It is a correct response to work that no one made decisions about. So what is the endgame? Not, I think, simply proving it can be done. If you only wanted to prove a technical point you would not reach for the word accurate - least of all for a poem, where accuracy means nothing. Reaching for accurate is reaching for authority: the right to say what is true. Musk is a man who publicly objected to the casting of a black actor as Helen of Troy and a trans actor as a Greek warrior. A man who operates within a wider political project about who gets to tell the national story, now claiming that a tool he owns can portray the past as it truly was. Follow that to its end. If his machine decides what is historically accurate, then he decides what the past looked like. And whoever is trusted to author the past is well placed to author the future. So watch this one with scepticism - not because AI cannot make images, it plainly can, but because "historically accurate" is a claim about truth. And truth is exactly what a machine trained on the average of everything cannot give you. It is also exactly, in this case, what its owner would most like to define.

@Grok, Can All the Money in the World Buy Good Taste?

Elon Musk made headlines overnight when he expressed interest in funding a hypothetical film production of The Odyssey directed by Mel Gibson. The billionaire quickly pivoted to a pledge to just make the same feature-length movie with his AI tool Grok and shared an example of what that might look like. As you can probably guess, it looks like dogshit. Musk has spent recent weeks complaining about Christopher Nolan's new version of The Odyssey, which has raked in over $300 million globally since its blockbuster debut last weekend. The Tesla CEO and his legion of whiny man-babies believe the film is too woke since it contains non-white actors and a trans person. Musk apparently decided Tuesday night that the only way to remedy this injustice was by creating his own version of the story. The billionaire initially replied "I'm down" when one X user floated the idea that he fund a $100 million adaptation directed by Mel Gibson. But just 10 minutes later, he seemed to land on a better (certainly cheaper) idea. Why not have Grok make the entire thing? "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 tweeted along with a three-minute clip made by Grok. The video is a mess, to say the least. The dialogue has an eerie, stilted quality. But if you have no taste and haven't seen a quality movie made by humans in a while, you might think this is worth your time. And that's to say nothing of the "accuracy" Musk says he's aspiring to. Do you think Homer was familiar with orange foam earplugs, as we see Odysseus wear in the clip? And check out the rowers behind Odysseus. Notice anything weird? Yeah, those guys aren't rowing. Their hands aren't holding the oars and the oars aren't touching the water. It's precisely the kind of thing that AI would make. And even if you didn't notice it on the first pass, your brain registered there wasn't something quite right in the background. There are a thousand signals like that when you're watching AI slop. You may not be able to pinpoint why it's weird; you just know something isn't right. Musk, as the wealthiest man in the world, has the resources to fund thousands of movies. If Mel Gibson was open to the idea, Musk could make his version of the film happen. But it's fitting that he would instead decide that the way to create this vision would be AI. That's the cheat code for all of this, in his mind. The problem is that he has hideous taste in visual media. Just take a look at previous AI videos Musk has shared. They're often scantily clad anime women dancing around in their underwear. Or AI women telling the viewer how much she loves them. An AI girlfriend never asks why you were out late trying to party on Jeffrey Epstein's island. An AI girlfriend doesn't need to get paid in horses to make sexual harassment claims go away. Allegedly. Or check out the Grok video he was promoting yesterday. The aesthetic to which Musk gravitates is as phony as it comes. It has a sheen that immediately reads as tacky and insincere. It's the polar opposite of Christopher Nolan's movies, which embrace the earnest and authentic. Even scenes that appear to be computer-generated, like the pigs in The Odyssey, were accomplished largely with practical effects. Whatever you think of Nolan's The Odyssey (and there are plenty of people with legitimate criticism), he's working on a different level than anything Musk hopes to produce. Musk's involvement simply would not make any movie better. That said, you don't need to have good taste to finance a quality movie made by humans. If Musk acted as nothing more than a checkbook for good directors, audiences could probably get something worthwhile out of it. But he showed us his thought process Tuesday night when he pivoted from entertaining the idea of funding Mel Gibson to just letting Grok do it. All it took was 10 minutes, and the billionaire decided to go with the lazier option. And we can bet good money that whatever his version of The Odyssey looks like will be terrible. Musk is also not great about keeping his promises. Remember in October 2025 when he told Joe Rogan that he'd demo a flying car by the end of the year? We're still waiting on that one. We could be waiting a lot longer for his version of The Odyssey.

Elon Musk says Grok is making a 'historically accurate' AI Odyssey movie -- here's what we know

The billionaire says xAI's Grok will tackle the epic in a full-length, AI-generated film Elon Musk has never been one to shy away from ambitious promises, and his latest claim may be one of his boldest yet. In a recent post on X, the xAI founder said Grok is working on a full-length, AI-generated adaptation of "The Odyssey" that he described as "historically accurate." It's a bold claim, for sure. AI video tools like Runway Gen-3 and Luma Dream Machine have already shown they can produce impressive short clips, but creating a coherent feature-length film is a much bigger challenge. If Musk's vision becomes reality, it would push AI video well beyond the short demonstrations we've seen so far. Here's what we know -- and why Musk's choice of the phrase "historically accurate" has sparked discussion. The AI race heads to Hollywood Until now, Grok has been best known as the chatbot built into X. An AI-generated movie would represent a major expansion of xAI's ambitions, suggesting the company wants to compete in AI video generation. The choice of "The Odyssey" is particularly ambitious. Homer's epic follows Odysseus on his long journey home after the Trojan War, combining ancient Greek settings with legendary creatures, gods and mythological events. Re-creating that story would require AI to maintain consistent characters, environments and visual style across thousands of shots -- something today's video models still struggle to do reliably. While AI can already generate remarkably realistic scenes lasting a few seconds, maintaining continuity across an entire feature film remains one of the industry's biggest technical hurdles. What does 'historically accurate' actually mean? Musk's wording has also raised questions. "The Odyssey" is one of the most influential works of classical literature, but it isn't a historical record. It blends elements of the ancient Greek world with mythology, including cyclopes, sirens and interventions from the gods. It's possible Musk is using "historically accurate" to mean faithful to the world described by Homer rather than literally historical. The phrase also echoes his long-standing criticism of AI systems that he believes distort history or alter historical depictions. Without additional details from xAI, though, it's impossible to know exactly what standards the company plans to use. Can Grok actually pull it off? As with many Musk announcements, it's worth treating both the timeline and the scope of the project with some caution. Producing a feature-length movie isn't just about generating convincing visuals. It also requires a cohesive screenplay, believable dialogue, voice performances, music, editing and scene-to-scene continuity. Musk hasn't shared many technical details about how Grok would handle those challenges, and xAI has yet to demonstrate a publicly available system capable of generating a full-length film. Still, the announcement highlights how quickly AI video is evolving. Just a few years ago, generating even a few seconds of realistic footage seemed out of reach. Now, companies are openly talking about feature-length productions. Whether Grok ultimately delivers on Musk's promise remains to be seen. But if it can produce a watchable, coherent feature-length film rather than a collection of impressive clips, it would represent one of the biggest milestones AI video has reached so far. Follow Tom's Guide on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Subscribe to Tom's Guide on YouTube and follow us on TikTok. Finally, you can visit our dedicated Tom's Guide Savings Squad hub for expert help on getting the best products for less.

Elon Musk says Grok Imagine will make 'historically accurate' AI adaptation of Homer's Odyssey

The billionaire says the AI-generated film will stay true to Homer's original, after repeatedly criticising Christopher Nolan's blockbuster over its casting choices Elon Musk has said his AI platform Grok Imagine will make a "historically accurate" adaptation of Homer's Odyssey, after the success of Christopher Nolan's blockbusting treatment which the SpaceX founder has regularly criticised over its casting. In a post on X, Musk said: "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 also linked to a post containing a three-minute clip of footage that the user said had been generated from Grok Imagine, showing a scene between Odysseus and the nymph Calypso. Musk has been attempting to stoke a culture war around Nolan's film, which stars Matt Damon as Odysseus and Anne Hathaway as Penelope, and was released on Friday to near-universal acclaim and achieved impressive box office results. Before the film was released, Musk reposted abusive messages aimed at Nolan's casting of Black actor Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra, and trans actor Elliot Page as Sinon, adding that "[Nolan] wants the awards" and that "[he] has lost his integrity". However, Musk's efforts appear to have had little effect, with The Odyssey taking US$264m (£196m, A$378m) at the global box office in its opening weekend and a 97% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In May, Nyong'o responded to rightwing critics, saying: "Our cast is representative of the world. I'm not spending my time thinking of a defence. The criticism will exist whether I engage with it or not". More recently, Nolan said the backlash "comes with the territory", saying: "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." The director was also withering in his assessment of the likely impact of artificial intelligence on film-making, saying: "The idea that it replaces human beings wholesale and human creativity, to me it's a nonsense." He added: "I've never seen a technology that's been so successfully adopted by Wall Street and by investors and by tech companies that the public has so thoroughly rejected."

Elon Musk claims Grok will make 'historically accurate' AI 'Odyssey' adaptation this year

Elon Musk says he'll make his own "Odyssey" with AI. Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" with human actor Matt Damon is now in theaters. Credit: Composite: Mashable / Images: Leon Neal / Getty Images / X screenshot / Melinda Sue Gordon / Universal Pictures In news that assures us that we are truly living in one of the worst timelines, Elon Musk has announced on X, the social media platform he owns, that Grok Imagine, the AI generator he owns, will make a "historically accurate" adaptation of Homer's The Odyssey. You might well ask why if you have had the good fortune to be oblivious to Musk's repeated complaints about Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. Well, in February of 2026, Musk used X to declare "Chris Nolan has lost his integrity," because Musk didn't like the casting of Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy. Then, in May, Musk retweeted X posts that criticized the casting of Elliot Page, including posts that misgender the trans actor. Musk also tweeted that month, "Chris Nolan is pissing on Homer's grave. Disgraceful." Musk has used the platform he owns to promote the idea that Nolan was casting not for "historical accuracy" of the fictional epic poem, but to appease the Oscars' inclusion standards. Musk was also a vocal part of the "go woke, go broke" online contingent that insisted Nolan's Odyssey would sink at the box office. To put it simply, they were wrong. Critics and audiences alike have heralded The Odyssey as a "masterpiece," cheering both the ensemble cast and the political messaging within the film. The nearly three-hour movie had a $124.5 million opening weekend, which is all the more impressive for a rated-R film. By contrast, Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises, a PG-13 movie with two prequels to build an audience, opened to $160 million in 2012. On top of that, the demand to see The Odyssey in 70mm IMAX has become a status symbol to moviegoers, with tickets to screenings sold out into August -- even for 3 a.m. showtimes. Audiences in person and online have also dove into discussing Nolan's unique adaptation, which plays as a spiritual sequel to Oppenheimer, and employs Matt Damon as its secret weapon. However, Musk thinks he and Grok can do better. Today, he tweeted: "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." The trailer he retweeted to illustrate what such a movie made by Grok Imagine might look like certainly is a trailer made by AI. Earlier this month, Nolan shared his thoughts on generative AI with AFP in Paris. The Guardian quotes him as saying, "But I think the idea that it replaces human beings wholesale and human creativity, to me it's a nonsense," adding, "I've never seen a technology that's been so successfully adopted by Wall Street and by investors and by tech companies that the public has so thoroughly rejected." Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is now in theaters. Elon Musk's The Odyssey is promised by the end of the year.

Elon Musk claims Grok will make a better Odyssey movie than Christopher Nolan

Like many chuds online, Elon Musk has some bones to pick with the box office smash hit The Odyssey. Musk, an accomplished ancient Greek scholar who is also known for his successful cave rescues, doesn't think Odyssey director Christopher Nolan rendered a realistic version of Homer's epic. Rather than spend his billions filming something better, Musk is going to use his proprietary artificial intelligence to set things right. The promise comes on the heels of a viral social media post on X, after a user prompted Grok to render a trailer for The Odyssey with a "correct" interpretation of the timeless classic. In practice, Grok generated a version of The Odyssey where Barstool Sports' Dave Portnoy kisses Star Wars actress Daisy Ridley. It's unclear if Musk was actually impressed by the footage, which hacks the 24-book poem into three-second frames that hit the viewer like a seizure. Whatever the case, Musk replied to the footage by promising that "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." This means that Musk believes that Grok, the LLM infamous for misinformation and offensive rhetoric, is capable of one-upping a multi-Oscar-winning director. Musk's post also served as a dog whistle for all the critics online who take umbrage at Nolan's artistic choices. Curiously, many of the specific issues these online denizens focus on just so happen to relate to casting choices for Black and trans actors. The culture wars around the movie, which is one of the best-performing films of the year, have led to conspiracy theories about its success. People would rather believe ticket sales are fake than countenance that the public might just like the movie. Anyway, academics versed in the subject will be the first to tell you that there can't truly really be a historically accurate version of The Odyssey. The epic poem is based on a vast oral tradition that began centuries before its written version (which some scholars believe to be the work of several authors). What we know today as The Odyssey is, by definition, an interpretation of the original collection of oral tales. And as Emily Wilson has proven, minor choices in translation can radically alter meaning. Nolan's movie thus sits in a long tradition of interpretations of an ancient myth. Arguably, seeing the many ways the work has been rendered over time and across cultures, is exactly what makes The Odyssey admirable in the first place. According to Musk's timeline, Grok has about five months to come up with something better than Christopher Nolan's movie. Funnily enough, considering how generative AI works, once Grok "makes" its own version, it will surely borrow a lot from Nolan's blockbuster movie.

Elon Musk Says Grok Will Generate Its Own Feature-Length Version of "The Odyssey" for People Allergic to Progressive Ideas

Can't-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Is it possible to not like a movie in a normal way? Can it simply not be "your thing" without being transposed onto some intangible, ever-raging culture war? It certainly isn't if you're an anti-woke crusader like SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Like a lot of very online right wingers who are suddenly qualified classicists, he's very upset about the new Odyssey adaptation directed by Christopher Nolan. Nolan, according to Musk, "desecrated Homer and groveled on his knees just to meet the woke rules required to win an Oscar." That's because his movie dares to do stuff like cast Black women and a trans man in prominent roles, making the director what Musk termed an "anti-White racist." In other words, it's supposedly not "historically accurate" -- never mind the fact that the epic poem contains gods wandering the Earth and a Cyclops. Thankfully, there's a wonderful piece of technology called AI out there that's perfect for realizing the juvenile aesthetic predilections of stunted creatives who want to wallow in an imagined idea of what the past was like. "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 declared Tuesday, referring to his own AI video generator. Musk's post quoted, and implicitly endorsed, a three minute dialogue scene that another user generated with Grok Imagine, featuring a virtual cast that looks more Western European than Mediterranean. No comment from Musk on if this was sufficiently "historically accurate," of course, despite previously accusing Nolan of having "total contempt for the Greek people" with his casting. Someone should probably let Musk know that there's already a fully AI-generated Odyssey adaptation coming out, but the creators behind that one seem to respect Nolan, so it probably won't be anti-woke enough for his taste. But maybe the perfect Odyssey film doesn't have to be AI-generated, if it's in the hands of the right director. One Musk fanboy suggested that he should "give Mel Gibson $100 million" to create a "painstakingly historically accurate" adaptation. Musk replied, "I'm down." (The last movie Gibson directed, "Flight Risk," was ripped to shreds by both critics and audiences.) Though for the past few months Musk has fought like a combatant in the Trojan War to drum up controversy over Nolan's film, his efforts have failed spectacularly. It opened to $264 million globally and will probably make a billion dollars, if not more, by the end of its run. It's gotten rave reviews from critics, and moviegoers seem to love it, too. And is anyone surprised? Nolan is a beloved figure in Hollywood with legions of fans. Musk has his own army of devout followers, too, but the difference is that Musk is constantly miserable, alienating even some of his own followers with his extreme takes. Nolan, whether you like his movies or not, is a showman that wants you to have a good time. Even Musk said Nolan was "awesome" a few years ago. Audiences will remember that they liked some of his other films and turn out for his new one. They probably won't take notice Musk melting down about it online, even if each of his posts gets hundreds of thousands of likes on his platform he remolded to be his personal echo chamber.

Epic fail? Elon Musk to make Grok AI 'Odyssey' film by the end of 2026

Elon Musk's anti-Odyssey campaign has gone to the next level, as the X owner has vowed that his AI social media bot, Grok, will make "a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer". ETA: "Before this year ends." Elon Musk is proving he's a sore loser. After spending months railing against Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey with racist outbursts, predicting that its diverse casting would lead to the film's "go woke, go broke" failure, the tech mogul has been proven rather spectacularly wrong. Reviews have been glowing (largely), and the global box office numbers don't lie: The Odyssey is a barn-storming success and one of the biggest hits of 2026after less than a week since its release. Clearly not taking the news well, Musk wrote on X that he was "down" to give Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation "with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek." He then followed that post with an announcement that his AI tool Grok Imagine would make a "historically accurate" full-length feature version of Homer's ancient Greek poem, adding that his AI version of "The Odyssey" would be ready by the end of 2026. "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," he posted, together with an AI-generated 3-minute short of "The Odyssey" posted by an X user. Where to begin? Beyond the fact that Musk has wasted his time frothing up the outrage of right-wing culture warriors by hatefully slamming the casting of Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy, making pathetic transphobic jokes at the expense of trans actor Elliot Page (who plays Sinon in The Odyssey) and bafflingly calling director Christopher Nolan an "anti-White racist", the trillionaire has clearly failed to understand three main things. The reactions online to Musk's Grok project have been far from positive, with X users either calling him a "moron" or a "cyclops truther". Check out some of the reactions below: Then again, a Grok retelling would only make Nolan's movie look even more of a meticulously made and human epic... So maybe we shouldn't be too discouraging of the man who thinks people want to live on Mars.

Elon Musk wants to make 'historically accurate' AI 'The Odyssey'

Elon Musk is revealing plans to make a "historically accurate" depiction of "The Odyssey" using artificial intelligence. Musk announced his intention to use Grok, a chatbot developed by his company xAI, to make his own movie following Homer's epic, after complaining about director Christopher Nolan's casting decisions on the record-breaking film. "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," the trillionaire wrote on X around 3 a.m. on Wednesday, July 22, while reposting another user's three-minute-long AI-generated version of "The Odyssey." Grok Imagine is the company's AI image and video generator. Some users praised the idea, with one person pushing for a Helen of Troy with "white skin and golden hair" to "respect history," while another called for a "factually" accurate version "representative of Greek people." Other users in the comments questioned how "historically accurate" the movie could get, given its a "mythological tale" based on an ancient poem with creatures that do not exist. "'Historically accurate.' There is a cyclops," one user wrote. Another user questioned the use of AI actors entirely. "No thanks. The people want real actors," one person wrote. "Use AI to help humanity, not entertain us. Also, humans are allowed to have their own take on a story if it's not historical fact. It's the fun part about being different." Musk was notably one of the loudest critics of Nolan casting Mexican-Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy in the film, claiming the director did so because he "wants the awards." Helen of Troy is widely considered a Greek mythological character -- the daughter of the Greek god Zeus, also a mythological character, and hatched from an egg -- not a real, historical figure. Homer does describe the face that could launch a thousand ships as "white-armed," though in Homeric Greek, it's meant to suggest that a person is high-status and does not spend time outdoors doing manual labor. The character has largely been potrayed by Caucasian women in art and media. In an Elle interview in May, Nyong'o pushed back on critics of her casting, calling "The Odyssey" a "mythological story" and adding that she is "very supportive of Chris' intention with it and with the version of this story that he is telling." In the same interview, Nolan praised the actress' "strength and poise" and said he was "absolutely desperate for her to do the part." Jon Bernthal, the on-screen husband who goes to war for her, previously told USA TODAY that "I don't think there's anyone else in the world who could play that part." The actor explained that her role was much deeper than just a "face." "We think of Helen of Troy and her beauty, but it's about the inner life and how rich that is," he continued. "She's able to bring the awkwardness and shame and betrayal and survivor's guilt and remorse and everything. To be able to bring in an actor like Lupita, who can convey so much with just a look - you really felt it in her. I'm so grateful it was her." Contributing: Patrick Ryan, USA TODAY

Elon Musk says Grok will make 'historically accurate' Odyssey movie this year

Elon Musk took aim at Christopher Nolan's adaptation of "The Odyssey," which was released earlier this month, for its historical inaccuracy. In the lead up to the movie's release, Musk remained critical over its lack of Greek representation in the cast. He wrote on the social platform X in May that "Chris Nolan is an anti-White racist," for casting Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra. Previous posts claim the director has "grossly insulted the Greek people" by not including Greek actors. "Shame on him" for doing so, Musk added. In his latest post, Musk reposted a three-minute clip of a trailer generated by Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot made by Musk's xAI, and claimed the artificial intelligence will be able to recreate the full-length movie that is "true to the art of Homer." Musk's post has already received over 8 million views as of Wednesday evening and is drawing controversy. Scholars have defended Nolan's casting choices. Daniel Mendelsohn, who previously translated "The Odyssey," said that he noticed Matt Damon's casting did not cause as much controversy despite the actor not being Greek. The Grok Imagine trailer notably replaces the title character and Calypso with AI-generated stand-ins. The original user who posted the clip also shared some of the prompts to create the trailer, like reimagining Calypso's character to be "ageless" with a "soft Greek accent. The use of AI in movies and TV shows has stirred up a wide debate in the movie community. In a revised bipartisan bill, the Senate is attempting to address the issue with the Nurture Originals, Foster Art and Keep Entertainment Safe Act (NO FAKES) to protect the likeness of people from digital replicas without consent. The bill recently advanced through the Senate Committee on the Judiciary unanimously.

Elon Musk Says Grok Will Make Feature-Length, AI-Generated and "Historically Accurate" 'The Odyssey' Movie Before the Year Ends

And so Elon Musk's anti-Odyssey campaign continues: The X owner and recently-anointed trillionaire has vowed that his AI social media bot, Grok, will make "a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer" before the end of the year. His post on Wednesday was accompanied by a three-minute AI-generated short that a follower had made using Grok Imagine. It comes as the South African businessman continues to rile up his supporters in a real culture war over Christopher Nolan's box office behemoth. His commentary on the film dates to January, when rumors of Lupita Nyong'o's casting as Helen of Troy first began circulating. He has criticized Nolan and Hollywood for their "woke" agenda, despite wide acknowledgement from actual historians that Homer's work is, of course, a piece of fiction. In May, Musk agreed with a racist comment made by a far-right journalist who took aim at the Oscar-winning actress' involvement: "We're told that we shouldn't object to Helen of Troy being portrayed as a black woman," said Daily Wire's Matt Walsh. "And yet if a major Hollywood studio made a film set in Africa and cast a white woman as 'the most beautiful woman in Africa,' those same people would literally riot in the street. If, say, Sydney Sweeney was cast in the role, they'd be driven to murderous violence. We all know this is the case." Musk chimed in via the comment section of Walsh's post: "Absolutely true. Such hypocrisy in Hollywood." It isn't the only cast announcement that the Tesla and SpaceX founder has taken issue with. When rumors surfaced that trans actor Elliot Page might be cast as Achilles, he reacted even more forcefully, saying: "One of the dumbest and most twisted things I've ever heard." (Musk, who has a trans daughter from his first marriage, Vivian Jenna Wilson, has historically made transphobic attacks against his own daughter. She has cut ties with him.) It's also worth noting that Page does not play Achilles in Nolan's film -- he portrays Sinon, a Greek soldier incorporated into the story from Virgil's epic poem The Aeneid. So, it isn't entirely surprising Musk would attempt to make his own Odyssey with what will be -- judging from the short snippet he reposted on Wednesday -- an all-white cast. Grok Imagine's retelling of the Homer epic will likely only make Nolan's feat look even more of a masterpiece, especially since it was shot entirely on Imax film and used extremely little CGI. Nolan himself has called the backlash over historical accuracy "irrelevant." He said: "Comes with the territory... 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." And for all of the outrage Musk has drummed up around The Odyssey, the film has not notably suffered at the box office at all. The retelling of classical Greek mythology got the box office back on track over the weekend, scoring $124.5 million on 3,900 North American screens. Earning an A CinemaScore from audiences, the film sailed away to 2026's biggest live-action opening, with only Toy Story 5 ($159 million) and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie ($131 million) debuting above it. The Odyssey also claimed the top R-rated opening of the year and Universal's highest weekend launch ever for an R-rated movie. Globally, The Odyssey collected $264.1 million, adding $139.6 million from 73 international markets. The film marks Nolan's biggest worldwide opening of all time, topping The Dark Knight Rises' $249 million global launch in 2012.

Elon Musk Claims That Before the End of 2026, Grok Will Make a Full-Length AI Movie of The Odyssey 'That Is Historically Accurate and True to the Art of Homer'

Elon Musk has claimed that Grok will make an AI movie of The Odyssey "that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer," by the end of 2026. He did not make any claim about whether it would be any good. Musk made the prediction while retweeting a 3-minute, AI-generated video of The Odyssey. "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 said. Musk's comment here comes as little surprise, given the X and Tesla owner was a vocal critic of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey in the run up to its release in theaters. Much of the online backlash, such as it is, revolved around conservative complaints that Nolan's The Odyssey would be "woke" for starring transgender actor Elliot Page (Sinon), rapper Travis Scott (the Bard), and black actress Lupita Nyong'o (Helen of Troy and her sister, Clytemnestra). "This is a mythological story," Nyong'o said in May. "I'm very supportive of Chris' intention with it and with the version of this story that he is telling. Our cast is representative of the world. I'm not spending my time thinking of a defense. The criticism will exist whether I engage with it or not." She added: "It's quite something to be a part of The Odyssey, because it is so grand. It spans worlds. So that's why the cast is what it is. We're occupying the epic narrative of our time." Based on the AI video he has retweeted, Musk would consider an all-white version of The Odyssey to be "historically accurate and true to the art of Homer." British accents seem okay, though. Ahead of release, The Odyssey was debated across the internet for its casting choices, some of its armor design, and the decision to have its characters speak with contemporary dialogue and in mostly modern American accents. High-profile Greek translators have said they do not take issue with any of that. Rather, their gripes revolve around some of the character and story changes Nolan has made. Prof Daniel Mendelsohn, whose translation of Homer's poem was published last year, said at the UK's Hay Festival in May that he was amused by "all of these bros suddenly worrying about Greek literature". According to a report in The Telegraph, Mendelsohn said: "What's so funny is that Helen has the tiniest role in The Odyssey... so the debate is particularly silly." Nolan himself will likely be unbothered by Musk and any threat from AI to The Odyssey. His adaptation blew away box office expectations with an opening weekend that brought home an incredible $264.064 million worldwide. The split puts the adaptation at a domestic haul of $124.5 million, with international markets accounting for the other $139.564 million. The global total marks Nolan's biggest box office opening weekend ever, towering over his previous achievements, including The Dark Knight Rises at $249 million and The Dark Knight at $198 million. The Odyssey is also critically acclaimed, with a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer, and a 97% rating on its Popcornmeter. IGN's The Odyssey review returned an 8/10. We said: "The Odyssey adapts Homer through a new eye that brings a sense of horror and existential angst to the story - and some humor too. It may not be a perfect movie, but it's a pretty great moviegoing experience all the same." Director Ash Koosha recently raised eyebrows for releasing a teaser for Odysseus: The Fall, another take on The Odyssey made entirely by AI. Nolan, meanwhile, has dismissed the tech. "The interesting thing with AI is I've never seen a technology that's been so successfully adopted by Wall Street and by investors and by tech companies that the public has so thoroughly rejected," he told AFP in Paris. "It's just sort of an odd thing. Young people in particular, they coined this term 'AI slop'," he added. "There's a sort of disdain for things AI." Photographer: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images. Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].