Grok drops the first seven minutes of its AI-made ‘Odyssey’

Three months after Elon Musk vowed that Grok would release a full-length, "historically accurate" film version of "The Odyssey," there are now exactly seven minutes to show for it — what the company calls "Episode 1 of our Odyssey series."

The project grew out of Musk's annoyance with Christopher Nolan's take, which he attacked for casting nonwhite and transgender actors. Nolan makes a near-perfect foil. While the SpaceX and Tesla boss hypes data centers in orbit and posts a steady stream of AI-generated content, Nolan calls himself a "techno-skeptic" and says that before AI he had never seen a technology "so completely rejected by the public."

Handmade vs. generated

Nolan's film used plenty of visual effects, too, but it rests on practical filmmaking: a shoot across six countries and a cast and crew numbering in the thousands. Released in July, it became a box-office phenomenon, selling out IMAX screenings for months and shaping up as the front-runner at the next Academy Awards.

Grok's version was made with Wonder Studios and director Dev Walker, using the Grok Imagine tool.

And the footage itself

The TechCrunch writer admits it isn't as spectacularly ugly as he'd braced for, and clearly a step up from Musk's other recent clips. There were even moments where, not knowing better, he might have taken it for real actors sailing a real sea. He can't vouch for the historical accuracy, but notes that every character arrives in a Musk-approved skin tone, while the narrator speaks in a British accent familiar to anyone who's played a fantasy video game or sat through a generic Hollywood epic of the past 25 years.

What the footage badly lacks is any sense of artistry, inspiration, or human interest. The voiceover backstory drags on forever before giving way to one bearded face after another, each barking lines so wooden they make Nolan's dialogue sound like Shakespeare.

A few shots pass as a reasonable simulacrum of reality, but the whole thing feels airless — no momentum, no reason to care about anyone on screen. Where he had no trouble staying glued to Nolan's nearly three-hour "Odyssey," he found himself listlessly checking the runtime on the Grok version before it was even halfway done. Another seven minutes of this, let alone a full movie, is hard to imagine wanting.

Source: TechCrunch