On February 23, Glasgow’s ‘Willy Wonka Chocolate Experience’ by Billy Coull had the worst opening day, with angry parents calling the cops for deceiving the event with AI. Coull’s House of Illuminati staged the event in Glasgow, Scotland, with tickets costing $44.
The event was billed using AI-generated visuals as a “place where chocolate dreams become reality,” complete with an enchanted garden, a “Imagination Lab” promising “mind-expanding projections and optical marvels,” and a “Twilight Tunnel.”
“This experience is in no way related to the Wonka franchise, which is owned by the Warner Bros. company.”
Billy Coull abruptly shut down the event after dissatisfied parents called the police after waiting in a long line with their children. According to Rolling Stone, Coull appears to be the single employee of the House of Illuminati.
Who is Billy Coull?
The director of the House of Illuminati, which claims to ‘convert conventional venues into immersive environments that take customers into a realm of magic,’ is responsible for the failed ‘Willy Wonka Experience”.
In addition to employing AI for advertising, Coull has released 17 Chat-GPT-written novels on Amazon in 2023, according to the Daily Mail.
His Amazon author page characterizes him as follows:
“Enigmatic wordsmith hailing from the bustling streets of Glasgow.”
After his parents accused him of deceptive marketing and demanded a refund on social media, Coull told the Daily Mail:
“We guarantee a full refund starting Monday. We employed artificial intelligence to generate visuals for the event.”
According to Companies House, Coull is the director of two other companies, Billy De Savage and Nexuma Holdings, which were founded last year and are registered to the same address in London.
Following the disastrous event, Coull’s internet profiles, including his LinkedIn profile and a YouTube channel where he claims to be a business guru and life coach, appeared to be deleted. His personal website has also been removed, and he is known to have fraudulent academic credentials. Coull also claimed to work for Empowerity, a brand that is now said to be extinct.
According to Rolling Stone, Coull was co-director of a Glasgow foodbank in 2021, where he claimed to feed thousands of households each month. The Foodbank is similarly nowhere to be found, with a broken web system.
Billy Coull’s long trail of questionable activities involving the usage of AI gives cause for thought on how AI can be employed in business tool to increase sales.