When the voice of Gene Wilder crackled back to life in a new Netflix reality series, it was not the late actor himself – but an AI replica – and while his widow said she was “delighted”, many fans recoiled, calling it “disrespectful” and “a plastic substitute”.
The streaming giant announced that Wonka’s The Golden Ticket will feature an AI-generated version of Wilder, who played the eccentric chocolatier in the 1971 film, with the voice replicated by audio AI firm ElevenLabs. The actor appears with the consent of his estate following his death in 2016. “In the end, it still sounds like every robotic AI voice you have heard,” said one unimpressed commenter on social media, while others jokingly drew comparisons to the disastrous “Willy’s Chocolate Experience” event in Glasgow last year. “Perhaps the Wonka experience was better than this (not that it’s saying much),” another posted alongside a drab picture of that fiasco.
“Netflix uses AI to recreate Gene Wilder's voice for Wonka show, drawing criticism from fans.”
Karen B. Wilder, the actor’s wife, said she was “delighted” the series “celebrates the imagination” he brought to the role. Netflix said the show would attempt to recreate – at least in look and feel – the story of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s book, with contestants taking part in “a series of Wonka’s temptations and challenges” for a final prize.
The decision follows other attempts to resurrect the voices of former entertainment stars using AI. In October 2024, Sir Michael Parkinson’s son defended the use of AI to recreate the late chat show host’s voice for a new interview podcast series. Jocelyn Burnham, who specialises in how AI is used in arts and culture, said studios appeared to be “testing the waters” for what audiences might accept. She pointed to Disney’s digital recreation of James Earl Jones’s voice as Darth Vader in the 2022 TV series Obi-Wan Kenobi as evidence that audiences are not “automatically hostile” to all uses of AI in screen performances. But she cautioned that while there is no “settled set of industry norms” around where audiences draw the line, the more loved the voice or character is, “the more scrutiny the resulting product is likely to face”.