Elon Musk reacts as Shivon Zilis uses Grok to animate 3-year-old son’s Starship drawing

Elon Musk is all hearts after Indian-origin partner uses Grok to animate his son’s doodle

Shivon Zilis, an executive at Neuralink and the mother of Elon Musk’s twins, recently captivated social media users after revealing how she used xAI’s generative tool, Grok Imagine, to animate a drawing made by her young son. The video garnered admiration from numerous parents and drew a tender response from Musk himself.

In a post shared on X (formerly Twitter), Zilis published a hand-drawn sketch created by her three-year-old son, Strider, addressed affectionately to “Daddy.” The illustration depicted a bright yellow spaceship flying toward a pink representation of Mars. Zilis then utilised Grok Imagine—a new artificial intelligence tool developed by Musk’s xAI company—to transform the simple doodle into a short animated video.

“Imagine bringing images to life,” she wrote in the caption accompanying the animated clip. The tool, which enables users to generate visuals and video content from written prompts, helped her turn the colourful sketch into a playful, moving depiction of her son’s imagined interplanetary journey.

pic.twitter.com/5XdQvCmd9t

— Shivon Zilis (@shivon) August 5, 2025

The animation struck a chord with social media users, especially fellow parents, many of whom began sharing animated renditions of their own children’s artwork. “The way my kids will learn art is so different. In a good way. They can truly see their imagination come to life,” one user commented. Another remarked, “That's such a great way to inspire kids to keep creating art and also preserve it for a long time.”

Elon Musk himself responded to the video with a smiling emoji surrounded by hearts. Later, he reshared Zilis’s creation with a caption promoting the Grok Imagine feature: “Grok Imagine can turn your child’s drawing into an animated movie.”

 

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 5, 2025

Zilis, who has Indian Punjabi roots through her mother and a Canadian father, shares four children with Musk: twins Strider and Azure, a daughter named Arcadia, and a son, Seldon Lycurgus.