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Elon Musk's answer to Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is AI slop

However you may feel about the film, we can all agree Grok can't make a better one.
23 Jul, 2026

Elon Musk is a bit like a reverse King Midas: everything he touches turns to dust. Okay, we’re exaggerating a little, but after he turned Twitter into a bot battlefield known as X and his version of an AI chatbot was used to “digitally remove women’s clothing”, can you really blame us?

His next victim appears to be The Odyssey — the ancient Greek text — which he has pledged to adapt in a way that is “historically accurate” by year’s end using his AI agent Grok.

Now, one would assume the richest man in the world might do this to bring a literary classic to a new generation or maybe to push the boundaries of filmmaking — in some weird, non-human way. But no, dear reader, he is doing it because he’s mad at Christopher Nolan for doing both of those things.

Nolan’s box office hit, which released on Friday, has taken the 3,000-year-old work and adapted it into a story that resonates with a modern audience. It has a diverse cast, a complex protagonist and focuses more on the guilt of war than its glory. Naturally, Musk does not approve.

Instead, the former trillionaire said he would give Mel Gibson $100 million to make the movie with “historically accurate” ships, armour and casting.

We wonder if several centuries from now, someone will try to remake Harry Potter and some obscenely rich person would object, saying the wands need to be made from a long-extinct species of tree endemic to Scotland.

Put the ethical and environmental implications of AI use for a moment and remember that Musk’s support of a cause usually signals that it is not the side to be on.

Really, Musk’s probably just mad that his prediction about the film flopping because it was “woke” didn’t pan out. Instead, The Odyssey had a massive $246 million opening weekend, with people around the world struggling to get last-minute seats at sold out theatres.

It’s also been received an outpouring of critical acclaim for its storytelling, characters and emphasis on practical effects. We can’t imagine anything AI generated could even come close.

As for Nolan, he’s previously dismissed criticism over his casting choices and Americanised dialogue.

“These conversations that happen before people see the film — they’re always irrelevant, because no one having them knows what the film actually is yet,” he told The Telegraph.

It is ironic though, a rich crybaby is feeding one of humanity’s greatest literary works to a computer and presenting its twisted mechanical output as art.

We wonder if Musk has actually read The Odyssey and how he feels about its lessons on hubris.

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