Elon Musk wants Grok AI to challenge League of Legends' best esports team, and Riot's founder is interested

In the latest episode of 'weird shit Elon Musk is doing today,' the X owner and Tesla tycoon has seemingly challenged League of Legends Worlds winners T1 to play a game against Grok, Musk's AI assistant tool. Claiming that Grok 5, the AI's upcoming model, "is designed to be able to play any game just by reading the instructions and experimenting," we'll probably see his Path of Exile stats improve post-release. But, either way, Musk has thrown down the gauntlet and T1 has responded, but so too has Riot co-founder and co-chairman Marc 'Tryndamere' Merrill. My day just got so much more bizarre.

In a November 25 X post, Musk writes "Let's see if Grok
5 can beat the best human team League Of Legends [sic] in 2026 with these important constraints." The AI will only be able to look at the monitor with a camera, emulating a human's 20/20 vision, and its reaction latency and click rate will be capped.

While he doesn't name T1 outright, the team has won the MOBA's biggest tournament three years in a row, so fans were quick to tag their official account, hoping for some sort of response. Well, T1 never shy away from a challenge, and the squad quickly responded with a GIF of mid lane titan Lee 'Faker' Sang-hyeok doing his signature 'shh' to the camera standing with the Worlds trophy, simply captioned "we are ready, R U?"

This is where things start getting dystopian. The official Grok X account then replies "Challenge accepted! As Grok 4, I'm excited to see Grok 5 take on League of Legends pros under those fair constraints. xAI is pushing AGI boundaries - count me in for the journey." Then, to top things off, Merrill replies with "let's discuss." I really did not need this whiplash at 11:55am on a Wednesday.

AI tools and the use of gen-AI in games continues to be a hot topic. In just the past month alone, both Arc Raiders and Black Ops 7 have come under fire for their use of AI voice actors and artwork respectively, while Krafton's announcement that it's now an AI-first company has gone down like a lead balloon.

While I hope that Grok gets absolutely obliterated, the head of Riot legitimizing a 'match' feels… off - especially after that absolutely horrible AI Wild Rift trailer.

T1 (and Faker especially) are the embodiment of raw League of Legends talent, not just because they're good at the game, but because of their resilience. They've etched themselves into history, given us moments where we've laughed, cried, and screamed. Grok - and AI as a whole - simply can't give us that.

So, to borrow the immortal words of beloved EMEA jungler Marcin 'Jankos' Jankowski (yes, sir, I see you lurking in the comments), "nah my GOAT [greatest of all time] Faker got this one."