The man behind the viral Willy Wonka disaster speaks out | 60 Minutes Australia

it seemed like a good idea at the time a Scottish entrepreneur thought he'd make money and just as importantly make a whole lot of children Happy by staging a Wily woner spectacular in Glasgow the idea was to take an empty warehouse and fill it with the Wonder of R dal's imagination he promised it would be like nothing the kids had ever seen before and he was right but for all the wrong reasons the event was a disaster F among many failings the entrepreneurs greatest was to rely on artificial intelligence to plan and then sell the Extravaganza as you'll see though AI simply wasn't smart enough to understand the magic of Willy Wonka fun turned to F Drury Glasgow is a far cry from a r Dar fantasy so folk in Scotland's largest city were understandably excited when the magic of Willie Wonka was coming to town come with me and you'll be pure this is what they expected and what they paid for a recreation of the enchanting Hollywood classic film and all the Willy Wonka bells and whistles a CH River the event would transform a Glasgow Warehouse into a magical Chocolate Factory a huge playground for children to enjoy not the glossy advertisements promis Kids the World chocolatey Bliss Whimsical performances Oompa Loompas giant mushrooms and Adventure at every bite and all the lollies and sweets they could have ever imagined mom Elana loins was among hundreds sucked in by the Allure of a special day out for her Wonker obsessed children we watched the films on a regular basis listened to the soundtrack you know singing the songs together and stuff so they had quickly become H you know quite big fans and they were really excited a family of Wonka fans you must feel like you struck gold well a Golden Ticket maybe yeah just want to treat close your eyes no peeking so excited Alana bought seven tickets to the Glasgow Willy Wonker experience for a staggering 165 W that's more than $300 Australian dollars she even put on a show of her own to make Precious Memories for her seven and four-year-old Chocolate Factory experience to the fact when I first booked the tickets it was like you know the kind of w Brandon um you know the kind of description of it sounded pretty spectacular um how wrong was I on the morning of the event the anticipation and excitement for waiting families had peaked but the moment they walked through the events doors it all came crashing down what a waste of money it was no chocolate Factor it was a bleak near empty Warehouse with plastic props shabby banners taped to walls oh look it's a chocolate River and a chocolate River made of cardboard he 4 PA the ticket for this there was none of the joy and color these kids had been looking forward to it was all so absurd their disappointment made Global headlines the disastrous Willies chocolate experience in Glasgow that went viral some even called the police to complain basically a big empty Warehouse with um vyl backdrops tacked to the it looks more like Willie Wonka's abandoned Auto Factory it seems the CH has been taking lessons on marketing from the wiie woner experience in Glasgow when we actually got inside and walked upstairs into the warehouse I just thought oh dear what is this I mean it was it was pretty poor it was pretty dire it was like something that you would see maybe at a kid's birthday party you know not an event that you've paid £35 a ticket for and uh no chocolate no no there wasn't a few jelly beans about an eigh of a cup of lemonade and that was pretty much up handing out those jelly beans was poor Kirsty Patterson the now infamous sad Oompa lper nothing summed up the shambles More Than This viral photo Kirsty was one of several actors roped in for a bizarre performance it was the Jelly Bean Counter but that looks like the meth lab um so it was just jelly beans I was hanging out yeah so it was rashed massively as well it was two jelly beans for each person and then we ran out so then it had to be one and it was just shocking the whole thing was absolutely shocking I could have set that up 2 seconds and my house you know it's awful beautiful wonderful fantastic Michael aror was the closest thing to Willy Wonka this right here his task welcoming the kids to the warehouse of pure disappointment the exact perfect words that I had for it was this is the place where dreams went to die you can't sugarcoat it at all can you no I couldn't really sugar coat it per se cuz there wasn't much sugar to begin with the farle event instantly went far Millions across the world had never seen a debacle quite like it Willie's Chocolate Factory in Glasgow failed miserably hilarity aside so much of the Glasgow Wonka nightmare points to a much bigger problem the danger opposed by artificial intelligence all of the events advertisements even the actor's scripts were computer generated Rebecca Johnson is an AI ethicist and researcher at the University of Sydney she fears if hundreds were fooled by this we're scarily vulnerable to a new age of Hightech trickery so seeing that people can be duped by what I think is pretty low-level generated content um means that they're definitely at risk of being duped by more slick uh AI content that perhaps is political in nature or pretending to be a friend or pretending to be a bank trying to get people's identity details or bank accounts or whatnot that's the much bigger risk so what happened in glow is a point to kind of take the scales off your eyes and take the rosecolor glasses off and have a look at what's really going on here children weren't the only ones duped the actors were too they had no hope of ever living up to the fantasy a computer concocted as much as they tried people say to me oh why didn't you just walk off like I would have walked off and I'm like it's not as easy as that when there's kids involved and they're walking in in their way outfits and they're all excited and it's like their Christmas presents it seems like you were just trying to salvage just an absolute catastrophe I mean a catastrophe is a understatement and I'd just say I yeah I tried my best and it was just not it was just impossible to salvage impossible what a waste of the organizers were now faced with a warehouse full of distraught children and enraged parents they're screaming they're crying some of the kids are just like what is this the parents are like are you serious you could hear the arguing you could hear people getting angry you could hear shouting you could you could you knew it wasn't going to end well at all where was that anger directed The Anger was directed I'd say towards the organizer Billy you're about to meet the man behind it all Billy CO's been labeled a con man and a scam artist coming up what was Billy thinking I feel that people are OD an explanation looking back on what was promised it's no surprise the Willy Wonker experience in Glasgow was a gigantic failure much of the show was imagined by artificial intelligence something the human organizers were never going to live up to how quickly and how easily cuz someone have pulled this together seconds AI expert Rebecca Johnson says it's so simple anyone could have done it so if I put kids playing in a chocolate factory made of candy and put that in that's what comes up in seconds oh you're an expert wow but you can see the child in the background there I think that if you zoomed in on that there might be a few um and Kenny things going on in there the faces the lips particularly the child at the back do you think it was a calculated scam or just a comedy of errors I can't imagine that this was some huge calculated scam I think it's someone that you know saw some tools that they could use perhaps didn't really think through the implications of what they were doing the man responsible is Billy Cole I'm not a scam artist I'm not a coin man I'm not anything like that Billy's event company the house of Illuminati delivered very little of what was expected he's now full of excuses but claims he's no crook the venue itself was too large for for what I had wanted to do we Ed projection systems and it creates a fully mess of space however it didn't arrive I was gutted but I believed that we could push on the last thing that I wanted to see was children being upset by you know frustrated parents you're scammed children Billy's disastrous event was shut down after just 2 hours it was so bad the police were called it's not them so the H of Lum guar the L Li Billy doubl down he admits to using AI but not he says to con children script itself was created and written by myself however let me be very very clear on on this matter I suffer with dyslexia I had run it through EI to be able to check spelling drama and continuity artificial intelligence expert re Becca Johnson isn't buying it 15 pages of confusing script were handed to actors the day before the glasgo event beans designed to help keep the we ones clean hot and spicy beans that lowers his voice attract the birds wink so excuse me what was that I know and then it says oh the gives an audience direction to laugh and appreciate the playful innuendo and I'm like well was clearly gibberish it gibberish but I mean it is not G-rated either reading through the script it's clear it has all the Hallmarks of an AI bot and the point is that the AI is not actually thinking anything uh the AI is you know a model that's using mathematical formulas to just generate what is the next most plausible sounding uh word or sentence in a piece of text they're not as good as humorize because they don't have a understanding or a wellview or well context that a human writer would have Rebecca's worry is it shows how easily people could duped by more sophisticated AI not just ripoffs and scams but potentially fake political propaganda deep fake photos like these swirl AI technology is advancing at such a rapid rate it could soon be much harder even for the trained eye to spot a fake two years we've gone from something that was really very abstract to something that is very realistic and certainly realistic enough to be able to fall quite a lot of people can't believe what you see anymore can't believe what you see can't believe what you hear so in 5 10 years time we could be sitting here looking up here and not being able to tell the difference oh definitely definitely glasgow's Willy Wonker ordeal is an example of what damage the misuse of AI can cause kids were shattered parents who spent big on hundreds of tickets were left out of pocket and it cost Billy too said we going to start to refund my life has been turned up down my life is is ruined I have lost my friends I've lost to love of my life I was made out to be the the face of all evil and genely that's really not the case many families though still haven't received refunds while actors Michael and Kirsty have given up hope of ever getting their full wage despite that they're embracing their new found infamy the focus might be on the dangers of AI but you can always trust an actor to steal the Limelight some of my friends were like oh yeah like some people are making jokes about it I've seen some posts on Facebook it's like millions of views millions of views lots of people talking about it it was getting insane uh but I I am having a bit of fun with it I'd say hasn't turned you off acting has it oh definitely not no that's my passion I've done it for years it's what I'm good at and I suppose the benefits out this viral meme it's given me other amazing opport unties with Charities and working with kids and showcasing my actual talents and turn any negative into a positive or what else when you've been given one Jelly Bean turn it into jelly a jelly don't know just when you been given lemon make it in lemon is it what's the saying again when you given lemon when you given a lemon make it into lemon you've got to you've got to hello I'm Adam hey thanks for watching 60 Minutes Australia subscribe to our Channel now for brand new stories and 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Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 606,677

Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Tara Brown, 60Mins, Amelia Adams, news, world news, news australia, investigative journalism, 60 minutes australia youtube, 60 minutes youtube, 60 minutes episodes, 60 minutes australia episodes, 60 minutes australia, 60 minutes, Adam Hegarty, Dimity Clancey, Nick McKenzie, willy wonka, charlie and the chocolate factory, chocolate, wonka, timothee chalamet, glasgow, scotland, ai, artificial intelligence, roald dahl

Id: oYMFXBzMhP4

Length: 16min 16sec (976 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 21 2024