Back in the summer, four days after Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey came out, Elon Musk promised that before the year was out Grok Imagine would make “a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”
The troller-in-chief's beef was that Nolan had dared cast a black actor and a trans one in the movie.
What’s turned up is seven minutes. Episode one of a series: Odysseus tries to dodge the Trojan War, gets held to an oath and sails off anyway.
And look, it’s rough. The lips don’t match the words, the delivery’s a bit am-dram, and the Ithacans land at Troy about a second after leaving home. Fastest crossing in Aegean history.
But here’s the bit I love. Wired asked Grok whether its own Odyssey was historically accurate. Grok said no. Modern English, British accents, cavalry where there shouldn’t be any - and anyway, it pointed out, The Odyssey is myth, not history.
The AI marked its own homework and gave it a 'fail'. Worth remembering next time someone sells you a tool that’s “always accurate”: ask the tool.
Meanwhile, Nolan’s version has since taken nearly $1.8bn and been acclaimed as a masterpiece. Not sure that Musk's one is going to garner similar praise, aside from his X-army of fanbots.
Still, seven minutes of narrative film made entirely from prompts would have been science fiction a couple of years ago. Not sure it’s art yet - but I remember when 'video' in a gallery horrified the intelligensia. The Grodyssey might not be it - but we're getting closer for sure ...