Elon Musk’s AI ‘Odyssey’ is getting destroyed by critics

Elon Musk’s “historically accurate” AI take on The Odyssey is now getting destroyed by critics after the first seven minutes were released earlier this week.

• READ MORE: ‘The Odyssey’ review: cinema may have peaked with Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster epic

Earlier this year, Musk took issue with the casting of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. He accused Nolan of being an “anti-white racist” who had lost his “integrity” by casting Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy and said the director was “desecrating Homer” to meet what he called the “woke rules required to win an Oscar”.

He then went on to say that by the end of 2026, he would create his own ”historically accurate” version of The Odyssey “that is true to the art of Homer” using his AI software Grok Imagine.

Earlier this week, the first seven-minutes of the AI Odyssey were shared online with fans quickly panning the clip as “garbage”. It hasn’t fared any better with critics either.

WATCH

Odyssey with Grok Imagine https://t.co/v0jljhql1T

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 24, 2026

“Every single dramatic moment is all as motiveless and meaningless as the movement of shapes on a laptop screensaver,” wrote The Guardian in their one-star review of the project. “If Elon’s AI-Odyssey is of any value at all, it is to underscore the basic truth: nobody believes AI has any artistic merit, only financial merit.”

Xavier Collins, the co-founder of Wonder Studios who helped create the AI take on The Odyssey, said the first episode was made in less than two weeks and cost tens of thousands of dollars. Nolan’s The Odyssey cost $250million.

“We were not given any direction to make [Musk’s version] anti-woke or anything like that,” added Collins. “We were given the opportunity by one of the world’s best frontier labs to work on one of the best stories ever told. The brief was ‘help us understand the technology, where it’s strong, where it could use improvement’.”

“In championing this abysmal AI Odyssey, Musk is dragging his reputation to new lows. For his sake, I hope he’s privately as repulsed by Grok’s Odyssey remake as most viewers have been,” wrote The Independent’s Louis Chilton. “This seven-minute AI horror show is so unsettling you can feel your eyeballs twitch at its sloppy gruesomeness,” said The Telegraph in their zero-star review.

Musk isn’t the only one to criticise Nolan’s take on The Odyssey though, with classics professor Emily Wilson also panning the adaptation. “We need art that is truthful about the costs and the necessity of compassion, and that recognises that a sense of spiritual superiority may not protect us from lies. These lessons are legible in Homer and Virgil, but are elided by Nolan’s visually stunning, emotionally empty film.”

Despite this criticism, The Odyssey has been a resounding success both critically and commercially, earning Nolan the best reviews of his career and becoming his highest-grossing movie of all time.