--- title: "The Winner of Elon Musk’s AI “Odyssey” Contest Will Make You Laugh Out Loud" description: "Elon Musk launched a contest to create an AI version of the The Odyssey, and the winners all look unbelievably terrible." date: "2026-09-14" modified: "2026-09-14" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore.md" url: "https://futurism.com/future-society/winner-elon-musk-ai-odyssey-contest" categories: - "Art" - "Elon Musk" - "Future Society" - "The Industrialists" --- # The Winner of Elon Musk’s AI “Odyssey” Contest Will Make You Laugh Out Loud ![A screenshot of an AI-generated picture of a cyclops with three eyes.]() *Nem Perez via X* Remember how Elon Musk vowed that his AI Grok would make an anti-woke, "historically accurate" version of the Odyssey? Well, he ended up throwing together a [whole contest around it]() — and the winner of the first place prize of $100,000 is, as you probably expected, laughable nonsense. The problems run deep. The Cyclops Polyphemus is depicted with three eyes, which feels disqualifying. And just a few cuts later, the famously monocular giant is at least four times as large as he was before. The other creatures and gods look like something out of a mobile game; Poseidon emerges from the sea appearing conspicuously cartoonish and impossibly muscled, before smashing Odysseus's ship and his crew of photorealistic, ripped men. Half the dialog is delivered in dramatic whispers with the same cadence. The fight scenes are cut to disguise the actual moments of impact, in the same way real B-movies do with aging action stars. There are some shots here and there that look convincing enough, if you can overlook their bland aesthetic. But this AI "film" suffers the same tragic flaw that all AI films do: their component clips fail to coalesce into a coherent whole. It doesn't do much on the "historically accurate" front, either; some of the Greek soldiers are clearly wearing the armor donned by Roman legionnaires. Nonetheless, its creator Nem Perez [declared]() that "this is 'The Odyssey' as Homer intended," before calling it his "most intricate work to date." He also labeled the video, in oxymoronic fashion, a "5-minute epic." https://twitter.com/NemPerez/status/2094341580190896255 It's unclear if Musk actually watched the winner; as far as we can tell, he hasn't replied or retweeted it, something he's done for other AI Odyssey adaptations. For those blissfully out of the loop, the centibillionaire and culture war crusader spent this summer raging against Christopher Nolan's adaptation of the Greek epic, attacking it for its diverse cast, which included several Black women and a trans actor. Nolan, Musk accused, "desecrated Homer and groveled on his knees just to meet the woke rules required to win an Oscar." As such, he vowed that his AI "Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer." We're still waiting for that full-length adaptation. But the short films that the contest has produced already make it painfully clear that AI video generators, and the "filmmakers" that embrace them, simply aren't up to snuff. In all of the top three entries, Odysseus looks more or less like the same guy — some weird, looksmaxxer's fantasy of a buff Antonio Banderas. Is this a fault of Grok or Grok users? At this point, the distinction may be moot. **More on AI:** [*Amazon Deploying AI Tech That Forces Actors’ Mouths to Match Dubbed Dialogue*]() ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()