For over a year now we’ve been waxing lyrical on this site about the creative potential of AI, but we’ve also never shied away from highlighting the potential pitfalls. One of those pitfalls was underlines quite spectacularly this week when a live event in Glasgow started making headlines for all the wrong reasons.
The event in question was billed as a “Willy Wonka Experience” that aimed to emulate the iconic moment in the classic Roald Dahl adaptation when the assorted competition winners entered the chocolate room to the strains of “Pure Imagination”.
If the AI images generated to promote the event (above) were to be believed, then it was going to be a legitimately stunning experience on par with the very best that Disney had to offer. The gulf between expectation and reality, however, has seldom been wider. Less pure imagination, more pure farce.
A Celebration of Chocolate in all its Delightful Forms
Police were called to a venue in Glasgow last weekend after customers turned up to the “immersive experience” from spectacularly named event organisers “House of Illuminati” and found that, for their £35 a ticket, they were getting a little less than what they bargained for.
The event was obviously a hastily arranged idea cobbled together to monopolise on the success of the recent Timothee Chalamet Wonka film and would probably have been forgotten about if it was a free-to-enter event with minimal publicity.
Unfortunately, however, the organisers decided to not only apply an outrageous cover charge but incentivise guests to pay by promoting the event with some fantastical artwork. Fantastical, AI-generated artwork, which had almost nothing to do with the final product. Therein, ladies and gentlemen, lies the inherent problem with using AI images to market your product – literally unrealistic expectations.
For the House of Illuminati, the fallout was pretty immediate. After an immediate and angry response from early arrivals who demanded their money back, the organisers called a halt to the event only hours after opening. Several social media groups were setup by disappointed families, the company’s name was left in the dirt and hundreds of memes were generated overnight. What does it mean for the future of AI generated advertising though?
Pure AImagination
For me, I think there’s a lesson to be learned here when it comes to using AI in your marketing – don’t overdo it and don’t rely on it to be creative for you. Because AI isn’t very creative at all. One disgruntled actor from the event claimed that even the script he was given to entertain guests was obviously “AI gibberish” and this underlines the problem here – charlatans assuming AI is going to do all the creative work for them.
I can only hope that the unmitigated disaster that took place in Glasgow last weekend sets an important precedent for so-called “creatives” thinking they can get away with the bare minimum and allow AI to fill in the gaps. On doing a little more digging, I was able to discover the sole member of the House of Illuminati, one Billy Coull, has also self-published 17 books on Amazon; all ostensibly AI generated bollocks.
Since the Willy Wonka fiasco blew up, Coull seems to have scrubbed his social media presence but, let’s be honest, he’ll probably be back under a new name in a few weeks, shilling his latest AI generated scam. Because that’s the thing with exciting new technologies, for every person using it for the betterment of mankind there will be a hundred others using it for nefarious purposes.
Let’s at least hope the next one is just as funny and doesn’t do anyone any real harm. Because it’s only going to get worse.
