Elon Musk declared Tuesday night he would use Grok to produce an AI-generated remake of Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" and was almost immediately fact-checked — by Grok.
The tech billionaire was doubling down on complaints on casting choices — such as Lupita Nyong’o and Elliot Page — which he has described as “racist against the Greek people and their cultural heritage."
"Before this year ends," Musk posted on his X social media platform about 10:40 p.m., "Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer."
The next morning, when an X-user asked about "the odds of this happening," Grok issued a response.
"Low odds for a full feature-length historically accurate Odyssey movie from Grok Imagine by Dec 31 2026," replied X's chatbot. "Short scenes and dialogue clips are already impressive but scaling to coherent 90+ minutes with perfect continuity narrative flow and Homeric fidelity is a steep technical climb. If it drops expect a Rotten Tomatoes score around 80-88: groundbreaking visuals and strong source fidelity could win over audiences though some critics may knock AI authorship. Ambitious goal."
Grok was not alone in casting doubts.
"It’s very important to note here that he did not say it was going to be good," jeered X user Carl Fungus Picks.
“'Historically accurate,'" snorted literature teacher Scott Barber. "There is a cyclops."
"This is funny but disappointingly less funny than Elon Musk deciding to direct his own actual competitor movie instead would've been," opined popular Bluesky user and film editor mtsw. "Because it will be AI slop it will be bad in one overwhelmingly predictable way while Elon deciding to direct an actual movie himself could be bad in an fascinatingly infinite number of ways."
"Elon, if anything the Odyssey is a warning about hubris, you may have a blind spot there – trees for the woods deal," noted Bluesky user Alan Gallery.
"I bet Elon Musk has never read The Odyssey," supposed writer Benjamin Myers.
"Looking forward to watching the hit new Elon Musk Grok Odyssey Movie in the middle of a Mars river in my fully aquatic and self-driving Cybertruck having paid for the ticket via my bank account on X, the Everything App, as I marvel at the post-DOGE balanced US federal budget," sneered author Dmitry Grozoubinski.
The world's richest man posted had posted his vow in response to another X user's post sharing a three-minute clip of their own AI-generated scene from "The Odyssey," which features stilted dialogue, Technicolor-style cinematography and strikingly white "actors."
"Dialogue scene from Homer's Odyssey built on Grok Imagine," said that user, Heavy Pulp. "Thread on how this was built below."
Heavy Pulp's efforts drew a mixed reaction, with some responders cheering for more and others comparing it to "Jesus of Nazareth 1970."