Beloved actor Gene Wilder, perhaps best known for his role as Willy Wonka in the 1971 musical fantasy film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, died in 2016 at the age of 83 from complications from Alzheimer’s disease.
Now, almost exactly 10 years later, Netflix is using AI to revive his voice — something that didn’t even exist when he was alive and without his consent.
The entertainment giant has released a trailer for its new Wonka-themed competition show, Wonka’s Golden Ticket, which uses Wilder’s AI-generated voice.
Furious fans reacted angrily to the development, with some calling it “disgusting” and a “really bad idea”. “Unacceptable and disrespectful,” one said.
“I hope this gets canceled,” one user tweeted. “Please stop using AI.”
At this point, the widespread disdain isn’t all that surprising. Studios and production companies have been trying to extract money from deceased celebrities for years, often with the consent of their families. This is just one part of a much broader backlash against AI that has been building up for quite some time.
Mr Wilder’s surviving wife, Karen Wilder, agreed to let her husband’s voice appear on the show and said she was “delighted” by the series, which “celebrates Mr Wilder’s imagination”.
The controversial Netflix game show will see contestants take part in “Wonka’s series of temptations and challenges” to win the final prize, presumably in the form of the prestigious “Golden Ticket.”
“For the first time in decades, we’re opening up our favorite chocolate factory,” Wilder’s AI-reconstructed voice says in the show’s trailer.
Wilder is not the first deceased celebrity to be pulled from the grave by AI. For example, earlier this year, the voice of comic book icon Stan Lee, who died in 2018, was cloned for the Stan Lee Book of the Month Club by ElevenLabs, the AI company that helped revive Wilder’s voice.
Other celebrities have also had their voices cloned without their explicit permission, including legendary author and television personality Anthony Bourdain and “Alien” actor Ian Holm.
Just last week, famous Hollywood actor Tom Hanks said: entertainment weekly He said he worries that one day Disney will replace his voice with AI in a future “Toy Story” series.
In short, given the widespread criticism, Netflix’s casual use of Wilder’s voice does not set the company up for success.
Netizens also criticized the derivative set design seen in the trailer and compared it to a disastrous 2024 event called “Willy’s Chocolate Experience” that made heavy use of AI in its marketing materials. Reportedly, the “immersive” experience, effectively AI-powered Fyre Fest, actually turned out to be so disappointing that children burst into tears and parents called the police.
“Maybe the Wonka Experience was better than this (not saying much),” one user scathingly wrote in response to the latest news.
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