Glasgow, recognized for its sharp wit and humor, consistently ranks among the top three funniest cities in the UK in surveys. However, a recent incident in late February involving an event called "Willy's Chocolate Experience" turned the city into an unintentional source of online amusement.
Billed as an extravagant celebration inspired by Roald Dahl's "Charlie & The Chocolate Factory" and the prequel "Wonka" directed by Paul King and featuring Timothée Chalamet, the event promised a chocolate-filled immersion reminiscent of Wonka's world, complete with giant candy canes and chocolate fountains. Well, at least on its website.
Despite charging £35 per ticket, attendees found themselves in an almost empty warehouse in the industrial area of Whiteinch decorated with sparse Wonka-themed props and actors (who did their best not to make children cry...) armed with an AI-generated script that included bizarre (AI-generated, obviously) characters like "The Unknown," an unsettling figure described as an "evil chocolate maker who lives in the walls" (an actor in a shiny mask, a wig and a black tunic…).
The ensuing chaos led to parental complaints, police involvement, and viral images, notably one of a disheartened young woman, Kirsty Paterson who, dressed like an Oompa-Loompa and standing behind a counter in front of what looked like a chemistry set, struggled to manage the meager jellybean distribution to disappointed kids (View this photo). The aftermath saw Internet users comparing the disaventure to the infamous "Fyre Festival" fiasco.
Yet good may come out of it, as the bizarre event inspired hilarious posts on social media including a recreation of the experience on Animal Crossing and turned the Oompa-Loompa into a meme, while a Scotland-based film production company, Kaledonia Pictures, announced the development of a horror movie inspired by the character of The Unknown.
But let's take a step back and consider another aspect of this story: the organizer (House of Illuminati, an events company directed by a man named Billy Coull) admitted to using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to generate the images to promote the event.
Now, if you go on the event website you will see that they look visually striking, complete of swirling lollipops, rivers of delicious melting chocolates and other sweet delicacies. Yes, there are also bizarre rabbit-like creatures, but you may argue that's a fantasy illustration, so it's almost understandable. Yet the images also featured rather bad spelling mistakes, hallucinations of the kind Artificial Intelligence produces with gusto.
Some examples: "Imagnation Lab," "Encherining Entertainment," "catgacating," "Cartchy tuns," "exarserdray lollipops," "a pasadise of sweet teats." One images regarding the "Twilight Tunnel" installation contains a list of words with so many errors that you wonder how could organizers miss them.
AI generated in this case generated images with terrible mistakes, but the immense disappointment wasn't caused by a naughty AI, but by bad human choices and management of the event.
In the end the organizers are responsible for this mess as they never checked the images they used for marketing purposes (nor the script given to the actors...), they were unable to deliver their promises and eventually misled customers. In a way this is not so different from those sites promoting products illustrated by pictures generated by Artificial Intelligence, but then selling bad imitations of said products.
Recently there was another embarrassing story involving AI-generated images: in February, Queensland Symphony Orchestra (QSO) shared a sponsored advert on social media for about 24 hours before a performance.
The advert accompanied by the slogan "Want to do something different this Saturday? Come see an orchestra play - we think you'll love it!" featured an image taken from stock image aggregator Shutterstock, portraying a couple in evening attire and romantic pose sitting in the front row of a concert hall.
So far so good, you may say, except that by analyzing the picture more in-depth (well, actually just looking at it a bit better...), you soon realized that something was wrong: the couple's hands seem to have a lot of extra fingers, the man's tuxedo also incorporates sections of the same tulle gown donned by his romantic partner who in turn also seems to have a very bizarre left shoulder/arm (at a weird angle, almost detached from her body...) and a mysterious black box on her lap.
Let's not mention the organ pipes that seem to extend all over the first floor (mainly on the left side of the image) and the members of the orchestra (with several extra hands as well and with some disturbing deformities, especially on the left side of the picture...in this image we're a few steps forward compared to the distortions produced by AI at the end of 2022) sitting right behind them, where the audience should be. Classical music news site Slipped Disc, that reported the news first, also noted that's not even QSO's Brisbane home.
That's not QSO's home because, as stated above, the image was bought from Shutterstock, listed under the AI prompt "two people having a date at a indoor classical music romantic concert."
The image appears to have been made last year when AI text-to-image generators still had problems with body distortions and credible hands. Surprisingly, it is still on Shutterstock, but then again you can also find AI-generated images for sale on Adobe Stock that feature inconsistencies and hallucinations.
The picture attracted the ire of the orchestra (perfectly understandable, was it really necessary with all the images you usually take of your own performers?), while the industry union Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) called it on facebook "the worst AI generated artwork we've seen."
It is obvious that, while most people criticize AI, many companies are turning to it to cut costs, but you wonder why they turn to such low quality images that may land them into major trouble and even cause them to spend more money (in the case of the Willy Experience, organizers will have to refund tickets; QSO's Shutterstock image may not be directly offensive to musicians, but may lead consumers to boycot them for their careless choice).
If the QSO wanted to employ an innovative technology, they may have hired their own prompt engineer who may have worked with a photographer, or buy better quality AI-generated pictures or, even better, they may have experimented on another level, coming up with more original concepts, like comparing an Artificial Intelligence-generated track and music played by their orchestra, to allow people to make the due differences.
In the creative industries, AI may be a fascinating tool, but you must also know how to use it. Companies thinking AI will save them money and time are extremely wrong: grand campaigns can't be generated with minimal effort. It takes time to come up with credible images, but it takes even more time to clear an image of mistakes, generate something more unique and improving the generated images.
AI text-to-image applications can be useful to quickly visualize ideas that may then be implemented with human professionals such as photographers, illustrators or graphic designers. But using the very first image produced by an AI text-to-image tool for an advertising campaign is never clever as that would need to be adapted, altered, or tailored to one's needs, or you may even need a proper photographer that could reshoot the concept to come up with more original images. In a nutshell, you must know the technology, its pros and cons before using it, otherwise you'll suffer from a loss of consumers' credibility.
As consumers, we should instead sharpen our critical skills when assessing images, questioning their authenticity, and scrutinizing details before forming judgments and believing the images genuinely reflect the reality (think about Taylor Swift's deepfake porn, or Donald Trump's supporters creating and sharing AI-generated fake images of Black voters to encourage African Americans to vote Republican - View this photo). Besides, if an image refers to a product that looks wonderful, but it's sold at a bargain price, we should also wonder if so little money can actually buy such a well-made design and wonder if that's a scam actually.
There's infinite joy in creating in a second glamorous campaigns with AI, but these images should be accompanied by a caveat - enjoy AI responsibly. Otherwise, rather than having to blame an Artificial Intelligence gone rogue, as in the cases shown in this post we may have to blame human negligence and incompetence.
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