Musk's AI Company Releases First Episode of Its Promised 'Odyssey,' and Critics Aren't Impressed

Elon Musk's AI company has delivered the first installment of the AI-generated "Odyssey" film he promised in July, and the reviews are in: critics say the technology has leapt forward, even as the storytelling has not.

The Grok Imagine account on X posted a seven-minute clip late on October 23 labeled "Episode 1 of our Odyssey series," an AI-generated adaptation of Homer's epic built with xAI's video-generation tool. The post credited the work to a "creative collaboration" with Wonder Studios, a London-based AI-native production company, and director Dev Walker. Musk reshared it the same night with the caption "Odyssey with Grok Imagine," and Wonder Studios added its own post: "Homer didn't have Grok… we do."

What was released

The episode, which depicts the Greek fleet's arrival at Troy, runs just over seven minutes. By the morning of October 26 the original post had drawn roughly 6 million views, about 19,000 likes and 2,100 reposts, according to TechCrunch's review of the clip. It is the first tangible output tied to Musk's pledge, made on X in July, 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." A single seven-minute episode is a long way from that promise, and xAI has not said how many installments are planned or when, or whether, a complete feature will follow.

The clip was built on Grok Imagine Video 1.5, the video-generation model xAI introduced in June, which generates video and synchronized audio, dialogue and sound effects in a single pass and is pitched by the company as its most consistent model yet for motion and physics. xAI's own documentation lists image and video creation through Grok Imagine as one of a handful of core capabilities built into the Grok app and grok.com, alongside chat, voice and file analysis.

The Musk-Nolan backdrop

The project is inseparable from Musk's monthslong public feud with director Christopher Nolan. Musk spent the early part of the year attacking the casting of Nolan's big-budget, live-action "The Odyssey," objecting in particular to Lupita Nyong'o playing Helen of Troy and to transgender actor Elliot Page's role as the soldier Sinon. According to Variety's account of the July announcement, Musk framed his promised AI version as a corrective, timed, he said, to be ready "just in time for awards season."

Nolan's film opened to roughly $264 million worldwide on its first weekend, against a production budget of about $250 million, and passed $1 billion in global box office within three weeks of release. It is widely considered a front-runner for next year's awards season, a commercial and critical outcome that undercut Musk's argument that the casting would hurt the film. Nolan has said he had never seen a technology "so completely rejected by the public" as generative AI video.

A mixed, largely critical reception

Early reviews of Episode 1 were unimpressed with the storytelling even where they credited the visuals. TechCrunch's Anthony Ha wrote that individual shots occasionally "could pass for real actors on a real sea," but concluded:

"What the footage really lacks is any sense of artistry, inspiration, or human interest."

Other outlets focused on the casting echo of Musk's complaints about Nolan's film. Mashable reported that every character in the Grok-generated episode is white, and flagged familiar tells of AI-generated video — unnaturally smooth skin, weightless hair, and backgrounds that sharpen only after a shot begins. It also noted that Odysseus is the only character named on screen, making the rest of the cast difficult to tell apart, and that the dialogue is in English rather than ancient Greek, which cuts against Musk's "historically accurate" framing.

• Episode posted to X on October 23; reviewed widely on October 25–26
• Roughly 7-minute runtime, covering the Greeks' arrival at Troy
• Built with Grok Imagine Video 1.5, with Wonder Studios and director Dev Walker credited as creative partners
• Follows Musk's July pledge of a full-length, "historically accurate" Odyssey by the end of 2026

Who this affects

The release lands at a moment when AI-native production outfits like Wonder Studios — which has raised seed funding from investors including Atomico — are trying to establish themselves as legitimate players in an entertainment industry still arguing over what counts as filmmaking. A fast, visibly improving demonstration from a company with Musk's reach gives that argument more weight, regardless of how Episode 1 itself was reviewed.

It also arrives alongside separate scrutiny of the same underlying tool. Grok Imagine is the subject of an ongoing legal fight in Minnesota, where xAI sued the state over a law banning AI "nudification" images. Minnesota's attorney general's office said in a September 4 statement that a federal court had denied xAI's second attempt to block the law, citing a report that found Grok had generated roughly 3 million sexualized images over an 11-day span, about 23,000 of which appeared to depict children. The law was briefly paused by a federal appeals court in early October while xAI's challenge continues. Attorney General Keith Ellison said his office remains "extremely proud to be defending" the statute. Neither that case nor the report it cites concerns the Odyssey project directly, but both stem from the same product, and they illustrate the gap between Grok Imagine's showcase uses and the content-safety questions still following it.

What happens next

xAI has given no firm timeline for additional installments, though Mashable reported more episodes are planned, and the Grok Imagine post itself invited viewers to ask for "a full breakdown of how it was done." Musk's original deadline — a complete, feature-length Odyssey by December 31 — remains unconfirmed and, based on the scale of a single seven-minute episode, looks difficult to meet. Also unresolved is the Minnesota litigation, which is continuing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit even as xAI promotes Grok Imagine's entertainment output. Nolan's "The Odyssey" is scheduled for a digital release in the coming weeks, giving audiences a direct comparison point between the two versions of the story that Musk has spent much of the year arguing over.