Grok Releases First AI-Generated Episode of ‘The Odyssey’
xAI’s Grok Imagine has released the first episode of an AI-generated adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey, a seven-minute video posted on October 25, three months after Elon Musk promised a full-length film. The episode, credited to Wonder Studios and director Dev Walker, is the project’s first finished output since Musk announced it in July.
Musk first announced the project in July 2026, days after he criticized the cast of Christopher Nolan’s live-action Odyssey film, which was in theaters at the time. He said Grok Imagine, xAI’s text-to-video tool, would produce a “historically accurate” full-length adaptation of Homer’s epic before the end of 2026, and he went on to share short AI-generated clips through the summer depicting scenes such as Odysseus’s farewell to his wife and his encounter with the Sirens, according to Tom’s Guide.
The Grok Imagine account on X posted the episode on October 23, writing “Watch Episode 1 of our Odyssey series made with Grok Imagine” and inviting viewers to request a breakdown of how it was made. The episode runs 7 minutes and 12 seconds in 4K resolution, according to FourWeekMBA, and carries credits for Wonder Studios and director Dev Walker, both tagged in the official post.
TechCrunch reported that Grok is framing the release as “Episode 1” of an ongoing series rather than the complete feature Musk had originally promised in July.
How the episode was received
TechCrunch’s review, written by Anthony Ha, said the footage was better than expected and more impressive than other AI video Musk has posted recently, with some shots good enough to pass for real actors filmed at sea. Ha wrote that he could not judge the episode’s historical accuracy.
The review’s main criticism was a lack of artistry and human interest rather than a technical flaw. Ha described the lengthy voiceover backstory as tedious and the dialogue as stilted, calling the piece “airless” and writing that he found himself checking the time before reaching the halfway point. He also noted that the AI-generated characters appeared to share a similar skin tone, which he linked to preferences Musk has publicly expressed, and that the narrator’s accent resembled the generic British voice common to fantasy games and Hollywood epics.
What happens next
xAI has not said how many episodes are planned or when the next installment will arrive, according to Tesla North. Musk’s original July pledge was for a complete feature-length film by the end of 2026, a target the company has not formally revised or withdrawn.
No director, writer, or cast beyond Wonder Studios and Dev Walker has been named for the series, and xAI has not published a production schedule or budget for further episodes.
Why Grok took on a Homer adaptation
Musk’s announcement followed his public criticism of Nolan’s casting choices for his own Odyssey film, after Nolan cast nonwhite and transgender actors in the production, according to TechCrunch. Musk argued an AI-generated version could render Homer’s text more faithfully, and the Grok Imagine clips he shared over the summer became one of the most visible public demonstrations yet of xAI’s video-generation tool.
The live-action Odyssey it is being compared to
Nolan’s own Odyssey, released in theaters in July, runs nearly three hours and was shot mainly through practical filmmaking across six countries with thousands of cast and crew, per TechCrunch. The film has sold out IMAX screenings for months and is widely considered a likely Oscar front-runner.
Nolan has described himself as a techno-skeptic and has publicly criticized the use of generative AI in filmmaking, a position that places his film and Grok’s AI-generated series on opposite sides of the same debate over how Homer’s epic should be adapted for the screen.
A test of sustained AI video generation
The project is one of the more ambitious public tests of whether AI video tools can sustain a continuous narrative across several minutes, rather than isolated clips a few seconds long. Coverage of Musk’s earlier Grok Imagine previews this summer described individual clips ranging from about six to fifteen seconds, so a continuous seven-minute episode required maintaining character and scene consistency across far more cuts than those earlier demos strung together.
Frequently asked questions
Is Grok’s Odyssey a full movie?
No. The October 25 release is a single episode running about seven minutes, not the full-length film Musk promised in July. xAI has not said whether or when further episodes will follow.
Who made the episode?
It is credited to Wonder Studios and director Dev Walker, built using xAI’s Grok Imagine video-generation tool.
Whether xAI releases a second episode, and whether the series ever converges into the full-length film Musk originally promised, remains unconfirmed.
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