Huckster Behind ‘Willy Wonka’ Event Also Sells AI-Written Vaccine Conspiracy Books
Parents are furious at a man who charged them as much as £35 (around $44) per ticket for a Willy Wonka-themed family event in Glasgow, Scotland, this weekend. That’s because the “immersive” experience sold to them by a sketchy company called House of Illuminati turned out to be little more than a few set props and unprepared actors in a mostly barren warehouse — with no chocolate whatsoever.
Customers, some of whom traveled from afar and waited in a long line with their children, were incensed enough to call the police after “Willy’s Chocolate Experience” turned out to be a ripoff and the organizer, Billy Coull, hastily closed it down on Saturday afternoon. Pictures from the botched tour went viral, in part because of the contrast between the lavish, colorful AI-generated artwork used in promotional materials and the depressing, laughably slapdash reality that greeted young fans of Roald Dahl‘s fanciful novel and its various film adaptations.
Those taken in by the misleading promotion mobilized for refunds and press coverage in a Facebook group this week, alternately griping and joking about the candy-coated catastrophe — and referring to Coull by crude nicknames like “Willy Wanker” in memes. But while Coull’s attempt to cash in on a beloved children’s book is already the stuff of local legend, the rest of his digital footprint reveals a new kind of aspiring entrepreneur that may become all too common: the AI abuser.
