Grok’s AI-made Odyssey is ready to watch
Grok Imagine has released the first episode of an AI-made Odyssey series. It’s roughly seven minutes long, so you can sit down and watch a story unfold instead of judging the technology from a few seconds in your feed.
The episode arrived Friday, and the announcement credits Wonder Studios and director Dev Walker. Human filmmakers were involved, so it shouldn’t be mistaken for a movie that Grok made entirely on its own. The announcement offers to explain how it was made, but doesn’t provide that breakdown.
Back in July, Elon Musk said Grok would make a full-length version of Homer’s epic by the end of the year. What you can watch now is billed as episode one of a series. The full-length movie he promised hasn’t arrived with this release.
You can watch the episode at the link below. I’d be interested to hear whether it holds your attention once the novelty of knowing it was made with AI wears off.
Apollo’s economist isn’t seeing AI’s payoff yet
AI might help you finish a task faster, but does that mean your company makes more money? Apollo’s chief economist, Torsten Slok, says he isn’t seeing that payoff across most big US companies yet.
In a note published Saturday, Slok compared seven giant tech companies with the other 493 businesses in the S&P 500. He says revenue per worker and profit margins are rising for the tech giants but staying flat for the rest. His argument is that cheaper, smarter AI still has to translate into better business results, and that hasn’t shown up in the figures he’s watching.
That doesn’t prove nobody outside big tech has benefited from AI. These are broad measures of company performance, not a controlled test that separates AI’s effect from everything else affecting a business. A team could save hours on a task without that improvement being visible in the overall numbers.
If you’re paying for AI at work, it’s a useful distinction to keep in mind. Finishing a draft faster is something you can measure. So is the time spent checking and fixing it. Count that time too before deciding whether the tool is worth paying for.
Scott