A bizarre Willy Wonka-inspired immersive event has been attracting attention for all the wrong reasons this week.
"Willy's Chocolate Experience" was such an unmitigated disaster that it was quickly shut down, with police called to the scene after families demanded refunds on the £35 ($44) tickets. One attendee called the event an "absolute shambles."
Some of the actors hired for the event have been speaking out with their suspicions that AI played a role in devising the chaotic script.
Paul Connell, an actor and stand-up comedian hired to play Willy Wonka at the event in Glasgow, Scotland, told the Independent the script provided was "15 pages of AI-generated gibberish" and required him to say "mad things."
"The bit that got me was where I had to say, 'There is a man we don't know his name. We know him as the Unknown. This Unknown is an evil chocolate maker who lives in the walls," Connell told the newspaper.
Kirsty Paterson, who played an Oompla-Loompa at the event, also suspected the script might have had a helping hand from AI.
"They kept going on about how you could just improvise," Paterson told Vulture. "I kind of thought it was AI-generated, but by this point, I'd signed the contract."
Jenny Fogarty, another actor hired for the event, told the Daily Mail she and her partner thought AI had written the content after they read the strangely written stage directions.
Screenshots of the script have been shared online, with several users speculating the content was AI-generated.
"To be fair to the AI that wrote the Willy Wonka script, it is a bold and radical gesture to provide stage directions dictating exactly when the audience will laugh, chuckle, 'murmur affirmatively' and be 'visibly amused,'" one X user joked.
Business Insider could not independently verify whether the script was AI-generated. When provided with images of the script, ChatGPT responded that it was "difficult to be certain" if the text was AI-generated.
The language on the event's website, which is still online, is similarly bizarre. Under the Entertainment section, something called "catgacating" was promised, along with "exarserdray lollipops" and a "pasadise of sweet teats."
Meanwhile, the "Imagination Lab" supposedly took visitors on a "surreal journey where the boundaries between reality and fantasy harmoniously merge, resulting in an enchanting and visually striking encounter."
Representatives for House of Illuminati, the event's organizers, also appears to use AI-style images on its website. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.
