Announced by the @grok account on August 17, 2026, the video competition asks creators to build a 3–5 minute scene from The Odyssey using Grok Imagine's video and voice, with $100K, $50K, and $25K for the top three entries. Submissions close August 31.
2026-08-19 · by Moe Ameen
X is putting up cash for AI-generated cinema. On August 17, 2026, the official @grok account announced a competition inviting creators to produce a scene from Homer's The Odyssey using Grok Imagine, xAI's image-and-video tool. The prize pool is $175,000, split across the top three entries: $100,000 for first, $50,000 for second, and $25,000 for third.
The rules are specific. Each entry must be a short film between three and five minutes long, with at least one full minute of spoken English dialogue, and the video, images, and character voices all have to be generated with Grok Imagine — other tools are allowed only for editing, music, and sound effects. Entrants submit by quoting the announcement post on X with their finished video. Eligibility is limited to U.S. residents 18 and older, the contest closes on August 31, 2026, and X has said winners will be announced shortly after. Grok recommends using Grok itself as a production assistant to write the scene, lock the dialogue, and break it into shots before generating.
The contest traces back to Elon Musk's public dislike of Christopher Nolan's recent film of The Odyssey; Musk has said Grok Imagine will produce a "historically accurate" adaptation of its own by the end of 2026, and this competition crowdsources scenes toward that ambition. Access to Grok Imagine runs through a paid tier — an X Premium, X Premium+, or SuperGrok subscription (SuperGrok is around $30/month) — and X has indicated entries are ranked in part by impressions on the Verified Premium timeline before being judged on quality and creativity. Treat the specifics as the current shape and confirm them against X's own posts, which are the primary source. This is separate from the earlier, larger Grok Imagine "Game Day" ad contest.
Whether or not you are eligible to chase the prize, the thing you make for this contest — a cinematic Odyssey scene with AI-generated voices — is worth more than one quote-reply buried in an X thread. Distribution is where a contest entry either compounds or evaporates, and that is the job [Kompozy](/) does. Take the finished film and let Kompozy [clip](/glossary/clipped-short) it into vertical shorts for TikTok, Reels, and Shorts, lay the shot list into a brand-exact making-of [Carousel](/glossary/hyperframes), pull the strongest line into a [Quote Graphic](/glossary/output-buckets), and spin a "how I made an AI Odyssey scene" [Blog Article](/glossary/output-buckets) and Email Newsletter — all in one voice through your [Persona Brief](/glossary/persona-brief), reframed to 9:16, 1:1, and 16:9, and scheduled across the eight social platforms plus blog and email.
And if you are one of the creators the U.S.-only rules shut out, Kompozy is where you generate the same kind of asset the contest showcases — [Persona Shorts](/glossary/persona-shorts) and avatar video, VFX hooks, and images — as a repeatable weekly system with a face-locked persona and native captions, not a one-weekend sprint. The contest is a moment; a content engine is the thing that keeps producing after August 31. See the tool behind it on our [Grok Imagine](/ai-tools/grok-imagine) and [Grok Imagine Video 1.5](/ai-tools/grok-imagine-video-1-5) pages.
It is a video competition X announced on August 17, 2026 via the @grok account. Creators build a 3–5 minute scene from Homer's The Odyssey using Grok Imagine's video and voice, and submit it by quoting the announcement post on X. The top three entries win $100,000, $50,000, and $25,000 — a $175,000 pool.
Each entry must be a short film of 3–5 minutes with at least one full minute of spoken English dialogue. The video, images, and character voices must be generated with Grok Imagine; other tools are allowed only for editing, music, and sound effects. Entrants are U.S. residents 18 and older, and submissions close August 31, 2026.
The prize pool is $175,000 across three winners: $100,000 for first place, $50,000 for second, and $25,000 for third. X has said entries are ranked partly by impressions on the Verified Premium timeline, then judged on quality and creativity.
Entering is free, but the required assets must come from Grok Imagine, which sits behind a paid tier — an X Premium, X Premium+, or SuperGrok subscription (SuperGrok is around $30/month). Confirm current tiers and limits on X before you start, since xAI changes them often.