Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2024 - Tonight on Sunday ` the deep tech that could see our small country make massive money. - I mean, these numbers are so huge, they're kind of beyond my comprehension, really. - Can we turn it on? - Yes, you can. Let's go. - Big rewards and big risks. - It can have quite serious implications for our exports overnight. They might not be required. - But can we afford not to? - We need to be part of that disruption, not just victims of it. - It sounds a lot scarier than what it is. - What people internationally think of New Zealand, he's created that. - What a wanker he was, publicising our beach. - And a local legend of surf photography... - You've gotta do things that are different to get the shot that is different. - ...known for making waves. - It did get pretty nasty, yeah. One guy had an axe, and one guy had an old .303 bolt-action rifle. - Plus ` what happens when Wonka goes wonky... - Sounded pretty spectacular. How wrong was I? - # Come with me, and you'll be... - ...when the promise of a dreamland... turns into a viral nightmare? - I just thought, 'Oh dear.' I mean, a catastrophe is an understatement. - Kia ora. I'm Miriama Kamo. Aotearoa ` the home of big skies and big-sky thinking. Our home-grown tech is creating global waves, from an electricity vortex to anti-doping tests to fermentation innovation. It's revolutionary, risky and really expensive. So how do we harness this big tech and turn it into big money? Tonight, Tania Page takes us on a tour of some incredible local innovations that could propel our economy into the stratosphere. (PENSIVE ACOUSTIC GUITAR MUSIC) - TANIA PAGE: 'We're heading to a secret spot near Gisborne...' Ooh. (CHUCKLES) '...a cow paddock...' Oh, this could be it. '...converted into a giant experiment, 'with a professor...' Hi. - Welcome to the site. (CHUCKLES) - Look at this! Oh my goodness. '...trying to revolutionise our energy sector. 'And it won't stay secret for long.' - We're gonna produce a vortex, and after we've proven that, then we'll produce electricity. It'll be the tallest manmade thing on the planet, I guess ` several kilometres tall. - When you can get this thing working, people are going to freak out. 'It's achingly close.' - This is the first pilot plant of its kind in the world. It's going well, but there have been challenges. - It's the culmination of a decade's work, which started here in this Auckland warehouse... - We have a clever system of counterbalance weights. - ...where very smart people are doing very clever things. - I'm Richard Flay, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Auckland and chief scientific officer and co-founder of Vortex Power Systems. - This is what he wants to recreate after spotting an idea in an engineering journal. - Where they talked about generating carbon-free electricity from a vortex, and I thought, 'Wow, that's really interesting. 'I'd love to look at that when I have the opportunity.' Tall vortices do occur in nature. For instance, there were three or four of them off the coast of New Plymouth. - He's already made a miniature one. - We're in the aerodynamics lab at the University of Auckland, and this is the rig where we proved that we can make buoyancy vortices. - So how does it work? - You need warm air near the ground, and you need swirls. We spray the hot water above the turbine so the warm air rises. - Creating a vacuum that pulls more air in past the vanes, which are like sails, set at the right angle so that... - As the flow comes in past the sails, it starts to swirl, and like a ballet dancer who pulls in their arms, it speeds up in the middle. - The hot mist swirls into a vortex, spinning a turbine connected to a generator. - And then we'll produce massive amounts of electricity. - It's pretty out there, but Professor Flay is well accustomed to breaking boundaries. (CHEERING) His innovations were part of our 1995 America's Cup win. - So, this wind tunnel is designed to simulate the flow in full scale. I put up an idea that we build a special wind tunnel for testing spinnakers. It was used hundreds of times and increased the thrust of the spinnakers by 15% ` so actually really incredible. - The America's Cup is now New Zealand's cup! - 'Back at the warehouse...' Can we turn it on? - Yes, you can. (HISSING, WHOOSHING, WHIRRING) And you can see it's centred on the turbine. - Wow. That's neat. What was it like first time you saw it? - When we saw it, we thought, 'Wow,' you know? It's better than we even expected. It's about 1.5m tall, so in the field, it'll be several kilometres tall. - Several kilometres? - Exactly. And the taller, the better. - A natural phenomenon replicated. What's also special about this is that the core ingredient ` the warm water being sprayed in ` will come from industrial waste. - Well, there's a huge amount of waste heat around the planet. - Like the steel and timber industries, even power stations. - All those power plants all round the world are producing waste heat. At the moment, it's being dumped into the sea, into rivers or cooling towers. - Financially, how much do you think the technology could be worth? - It's in the billions of dollars. I mean, these numbers are so huge, they're kind of beyond my comprehension, really. And it could create a lot of income for New Zealand. - We'll come back to this idea soon. (RELAXED MUSIC) - Can I get an oat milk flat white, please? - Across town, another scientist using innovation to change our morning ritual. - Yeah, massively ` across milks, animal protein. Vegan-vegetarian is growing. I think the awareness of the impacts on the environment ` everyone's becoming more conscious now. I'm Emily. - And I'm Irina. - And we're two of the co-founders of Daisy Lab. - Emily McIsaac and Irina Miller have reimagined how to make milk powder ` our biggest dairy export product ` without the main ingredient. - Why don't we go straight to the final product and just skip the animal altogether and use a similar process that we already do? - So cut out the cow? - Yeah, exactly. Cut out the cow, because we can. - They can with precision fermentation, which has been used for decades to make insulin, vanilla essence and rennet for cheese. - Most likely... 90% that you've eaten cheese made already with precision fermentation ingredient, which is rennet. - Go and pick up a block of Edam and look at the back, and it will say 'animal-free rennet'. - Here's how it works. - So, we have our fermenter here, which is, uh, where the microorganisms grow, and they do the fermentation, producing the protein. And then we put it in a centrifuge. So that just spins the samples really fast. - 'Separating the microorganisms out.' (BEEP! BEEP!) (DELICATE, INTRIGUING MUSIC) Oh, I see. - And there we go. So, we've got the two layers. So, the liquid, which has the whey protein, will then go through the filtration system and then is freeze-dried into powder. - And what was it like the first time you produced this? - It was quite surreal, to be honest. We worked for a good couple of years to get to this point. - They did it at this deep-tech hub under the watchful gaze of a man who knows all about taking big ideas global. - Hi. I'm Sean Simpson, founder of LanzaTech and chairman at Outset Ventures. - We first met Sean in Chicago, where LanzaTech, valued at $680 million, is based. - So, the bugs themselves eat gases. So think about fermentation for beer. - He also used precision fermentation to recycle carbon pollution back into useful products like ethanol. I think you wore that T-shirt when I interviewed you in Chicago. - I did. (LAUGHS) - LAUGHS: You did, didn't you?! - Yes! It's, uh, 'science doesn't care what you believe'. (CHUCKLES) Really, we missed home, and we wanted our kids to, um, grow up feeling like they are Kiwis. This is the building in which we started ` literally on day one ` in the basement, and ourselves and Rocket Lab, actually. It's been the birthplace of so many great deep-tech, kind of, hard-tech start-up. - What is deep tech? - It's big-sky thinking, big-industry thinking, um, transformative thinking. So, we have around 20 different companies based in this facility, companies as diverse as Energy Bank, who have a really exciting way to store energy made in offshore wind farms, or Astrix, who have a new way to deploy solar arrays in space. It's, uh, very, very exciting. - He's using his expertise to tautoko the next generation and connect them with investors. - (KNOCKS) - Hello. - Hello. How's it going? - Come on in. Good. - I'll put a lab coat on? - Yes. Grab that navy one there. These are our two 10-litre ones that we recently just purchased... - Yeah. - ...from your suggestion. - New lab equipment is so expensive. These second-hand lab equipment sites where you get perfectly good gear... - The fermentation process both scientists use involves genetic modification. - Sounds a lot scarier than what it is. So, we take a friendly microorganism ` so you think of something like baker's yeast ` and then you take a piece of DNA, and that piece of DNA encodes for the protein that you're wanting to produce. - Once inserted, that DNA makes the microorganism produce cow's milk protein. - That organism can't exist outside of the conditions that we provide it. As soon as it's outside those conditions, it dies. - So the genetically modified organisms have been completely separated out? - Yes, so they're completely separated out, and then the next stage of our filtration process also ensures that there's no cells that make it through to the final product. - Under current legislation, Daisy Lab's science can't leave this room, which frustrates her mentor. - We in New Zealand fund countless millions of dollars to develop genetically modified organisms, but we can't commercialise the outcome of that research in our own country. It makes no sense. - But it isn't a dealbreaker for this team. - Our plan is actually not necessarily to sell bulk ingredient proteins; our plan is actually to sell the technology, our knowledge. - It's technology dairy giant Fonterra is already chasing by investing overseas in gene-edited dairy alternatives. Once milk powder can be mass-produced, it'll be a game changer. - You don't need green pasture. You need minimal water. It can have quite serious implications for our exports, because just overnight, they might not be required. - It's the kind of thing some farmers might find a bit threatening. - Potentially, but I think we will never replace whole milk as it comes out of the cow. What we're doing is just producing the individual proteins. - It could be threatening to farmers to have this technology, but it would be even more threatening not to have it. - And we need to be part of that disruption, not just victims of it. - Soon ` another big-sky tech disruptor. - We're definitely a world first. - And the challenge of going from lab to life-sized. (RELAXED, INTROSPECTIVE MUSIC) TANIA PAGE: In Aotearoa, dozens of deep-tech ideas are in a race for funds... some hindered by legislation... (BUBBLING) ...others on the cusp of major breakthroughs. Only the toughest survive. - I'm Alison Heather, professor of physiology at the University of Otago and the chief scientific officer and co-founder of Insitugen. - Alison is leading the pack globally in creating the latest anti-doping technology. - In terms of being able to have a rapid, easy-to-use kit that can tell you in a couple of hours what's in your sample, we are` we're definitely a world first. I myself do high-level sport in triathlon. I really liked the fact that I could marry my work with my sport. - Not just any triathlon. - Alison Heather, you are an Ironman. - A 13-time Ironman who's figured out how to catch out designer steroid users... in a test that's relatively cheap and portable. - Even if, in a small way, the Insitugen technology can help ensure that we've got a clean sport, um, I feel like I'm giving back to society. - Vets at Auckland's Alexandra Raceway are using it. - There you go. There you go. Two to go. Good pony. - So, we use it for... racing horses now. We use it for racing camels now. - Blood samples are taken from the winners ` not just here, but in Australia, the United Arab Emirates and further afield. - It's exciting. Our test is now being used in all these different regions and, by the end of this year, probably across the world. (DEVICES HUM BRIEFLY) - Two-legged athletes are far more complicated. - If we want to take a test into the human market, the regulatory hurdles that we need to overcome to make sure that it's safe and that it's ethical to use across the human sports requires a lot more capitalisation ` so we're talking in the high millions. - But human athletes do benefit already, as Insitugen is also used to ensure sports supplements are safe. - Plasmaide is a sports supplement that's produced in Australia, and they actually get us to test it. - So they know they won't be taking anything accidentally that they're not supposed to. - Absolutely. That's right. - She launched the start-up at Otago University in 2016, but real growth required funds from Kiwi deep-tech investors Pacific Channel, who appointed a CEO. - Who knew how to make strategic partnerships ` that's what really took us from a university research project to a fully fledged start-up company. - You must have seen a lot of start-ups come and go. How many make it? - It's really difficult to say. - 'Sean Simpson from Outset Ventures.' - What I can say, though, is it really does require... a combination of a great idea... and a great team. - 'Patience and persistence.' - For LanzaTech, the time from starting the company to building the first commercial reactor was 13 years. - The secret to the success that we've got so far is that I built something that was fit for purpose. I knew what was needed, and then I built backwards to ` how can I take a technology and fill this gap? - For me, the best kind of ideas are those that look to... disrupt existing processes or products, take risks, take long-term risks, but also who recognise, ultimately, the prize, and the prize here are brand-new industrial processes that could grow to dominate our economy. - Back near Gisborne, Professor Richard Flay and the team are building the first pilot plant of its kind. - We are close. Well, you can see behind me, we're spraying water, swirl vanes ready to go, and we need to test out a few more systems and wait for the right weather. - The warm water will ultimately come as waste heat from industry to generate clean electricity by making a life-sized one of these ` a man-made vortex. Is there any chance a vortex could break free and go rogue? - It won't go rogue, but it could blow off the top of our vortex engine. But once it does that, the source of energy disappears, because it doesn't have that warm water. Getting a bit harder now. Yeah, there's quite a bit of trial and error. No one else has ever tried to mount a ring of sails, you know, 12 sails (CHUCKLES) in a field like us. - But they're making progress daily by thinking outside the square. - For instance, we've changed the fittings at the top of the mast to make them freer, and we've lubricated the mast. - What have you done that with? - Well, that was with, uh, duck fat, actually. (BOTH LAUGH) I think the duck fat has helped. - I think it's done a great job! - (CHUCKLES) - A lashing of duck fat, $5.5 million later and almost a decade in the making, the windward swirl vanes now hoist easily. - Can be seen for miles, you see. Um, how tall? Well, it depends on the atmospheric conditions, but maybe 5km. We'll go into the Guinness Book of Records. (CHUCKLES) Yeah. - And you're 100% confident you can do it? - Oh, I don't think any engineer is ever 100% confident, but we're up in the 90s, yeah. (CHUCKLES) Engineers are, by nature, conservative. - 90 is pretty high. - Yeah, well, we wouldn't be doing all this if we weren't pretty confident. - It's already such a sight and so close to working. - Creating something that's difficult ` so, if it was easy, someone else would've done it, you know? So we're sort of trying to pave the way here. You have to sort of believe in yourself and believe in the people around you and, you know, say, 'Well, we can do this.' - Well, Richard and his team are hoping to start testing their vortex very soon. As for Daisy Lab, the government is looking into ethical concerns around biotechnology and aims to have a bill ready by the end of this year. E haere ake nei ` the surf photographer who put Aotearoa on the map... - And I just went, 'Wow, New Zealand looks, like, really untouched.' - ...and the locals who weren't too happy about it. - Oh my God, mate. What are you trying to do? You know? What are you trying to do to us? - Do you think many people in New Zealand know what you look like? - No, they wouldn't. Hopefully not. - Hoki mai ano. Logan Murray is one of New Zealand's most renowned surf photographers. For over 50 years, his incredible images of perfect, empty waves put New Zealand on the world surf map. But while millions have seen his images, very few have seen Logan himself. The reason? He's a marked man. Angry local surfers wanting to protect their secret surf spots even openly threatened his life. Here's Mark Crysell with the man, the myth that is Logan Murray. (SEABIRDS CALL) (INTRIGUING VIOLIN MUSIC) MARK CRYSELL: For more than 50 years, Logan Murray has gone to great lengths to disguise his identity. - Had sniper training ` great source of how to go about my job without attracting any attention. - Now you see him... - You're trying to shoot places that haven't been shot... - ...now you don't. - ...and other photographers are too frightened to go there. - His film stock-in-trade ` perfect, empty waves. The green, green grass of home. - I think he's done more than any other photographer for New Zealand surfing, you know, for what people internationally think of New Zealand. He's created that, you know? - Locals didn't see it that way. - What a wanker he was for publicising our beach, our beaches, our breaks. I'd heard it through other people that he'd had death threats. - Do you think many people in New Zealand know what you look like? - No, they wouldn't. Hopefully not, um, up until this point. I went to a lot of trouble to try and ensure that they didn't. (LAID-BACK HARMONICA MUSIC) - Surfers these days slide easily into the mainstream. But there was a time ` not that long ago ` when they were anything but. - We were sort of regarded as the scum of the earth, really, because we were considered as beach bums. - Steve Davis, aka Roachie, a surfie since the early '70s. - And, you know, a lot of people were on the government surf team... - The dole? - The dole. (CHUCKLES) - This wasn't the Beach Boys or hanging ten at Malibu. This was a small, hardcore crew living on the fringes in an era when very few knew New Zealand had world-class surf. And that's how they liked it. What about secret spots? How important are they? - Absolutely essential. Yeah, and keep them quiet. - Those spots were fiercely protected. - One, the worst form is where they try to enforce the law. You know, like, where they try to say, 'Hey, this is our beach. You can just go.' You can have clashes in the water. - One of the centres of this underground cult was Mt Maunganui. - The Mount was a really small town, working-class town, and it was full of all these baches that were empty for most of the year that young people could rent very cheaply. - Logan Murray had washed up at the Mount. He was working as a press photographer for the Bay of Plenty Times. This looks like a sniper rifle. But he was locked and loaded with an arsenal for his secret passion ` surf photography. - It's a, uh, American lens uh, from Century Optics in Hollywood... used at the time by all the American surf photographers and surf movie makers. - The bibles for this underground culture were glossy surf mags and the big kahuna ` Surfer magazine from America. - I just saw the American magazines as a real challenge to see if I could get material that was on a par with the overseas photographers whose work I'd always admired. - Logan scoured the Bay of Plenty for perfect waves to shoot and sell to the overseas mags. - To get a cover, it's... it's sort of like you've won the Oscar. - His partner in crime ` one of New Zealand's finest surfers, Kevin Jarrett, better known as Ernie. What's it like to be famous? - CHUCKLES: Nah. - Together, not far from home, they hit the secret spot jackpot. - I called it Puni's Farm. It had great water colour, powerful waves. They broke really close, so it was easy to get full-frame photographs. - Close enough to the action to snap Ernie in the tube. Zoom in and you can see he's holding something in his hand. You were holding a bag of apples? - Yeah. Didn't really think much of it at the time. Straightened out on to the beach, and the boys came down, grabbed the apples, and everybody was so hungry, you know, into them. - Logan's lens captured sunny days of perfect, clean and green empty waves. But one stood out above all the others. Is this your greatest ever photo? - It's my` It's my most iconic photo. It changed my career. Um, and I guess it changed how other people perceive me. - He scoped out the right location between the trees, then waited two and a half years for the right wave. - Concentrate on this wave to start with, and was a little nervous, because I knew I only had one shot. I had to get the focus exactly right. It started to throw, it started to... barrel, and I fired the shot. - It's been acclaimed as one of the greatest surf photos ever taken, one of a set he mailed off to Surfer magazine in California, home to some of the most crowded surf on the planet. Puni's Farm was the empty utopia all surfers dreamed of. - But I just went, 'Wow. New Zealand looks, like, really untouched.' - Hawaiian Jeff Hakman, founder of Quiksilver USA and one of the best surfers in the world in the early '70s. - These just beautiful line-up shots with nobody around in New Zealand and these little roads and bays and mountains and sheep and just this rural, beautiful... images. Logan created this aura or this dream of New Zealand that was, um, a fantasy, in a way, you know? - Yeah. I wasn't too happy about it. Not happy about it at all. - Many New Zealand surfies saw it differently. - Suddenly, there's New Zealand. It's like, 'What the?' You know? And it's like, 'Wait a minute, who's taken this?' And you'd see his name at the bottom ` Logan Murray. - Logan, to them, had broken a code. - It was like, 'Oh my God, mate, what are you trying to do?' You know, 'What are you trying to do to us?' Cos we don't wanna go international. We want this little country down here that we have our own waves to be nice and quiet. - It did get pretty nasty, yeah. - What happens next beggars belief. Logan Murray had a target on his back. - Oh, they'd threaten to, if you came to their town, that they would, um, break all your fingers so you couldn't type stories, that they would smash your camera gear, that you would be badly beaten. - Surf shops and cafes carried wanted posters. Tracks, a local surf magazine, devoted an entire section to Logan Murray hate mail. Well, here's some of the stuff they said. 'This is your last warning, Logan. 'Next time, you'll get (BLEEP) brained, put up against a wall and shot, 'then strung and quartered like every other pig.' Yeah, I mean, it` it was bizarre. Um... - These are serious threats to your life. - It was` Yeah, it was serious. One night, there was some` a car drove up to the flat, and guys got out and banged on the door. And I went to the door in my pyjamas, and one guy had an axe, and one guy had an old .303 bolt-action rifle. - Logan talked them out of it, threatened to sue Tracks magazine, and they shut down. - I sort of felt that if I buckle to this, then I'm letting down all the other future young men and women who would want to be surf photographers. - But it changed him. - I was already kind of a shy kid, but it made me even more shy. I wasn't getting the social interaction that a normal young man would get, because it simply wasn't safe. - That's outrageous. You know, on reflection, you look at the behaviour now, how we` how we've grown, how the sport's grown now. But, you know, you've gotta think back to the thinking and the feeling around... and the protection of the breaks in New Zealand back then, you know? It was really protective. - But here's the kicker. Puni's Farm was never a real place. - I used Matakana as the location for all the action shots and line-up shots. - Matakana Island is a paddle from the Mount across Tauranga Harbour. All the photos of a fictitious Puni's Farm were taken somewhere else. - I shot around Tauranga, Te Puke ` and beautiful forest scenes against some of Rotorua's prettiest lakes ` and combined it all into this sort of utopia. And the American publishers at that time were looking for somewhere different, somewhere new, and, um, bingo ` delivered on a plate was Puni's Farm. - And it was all a lie? - And it was all an invention, a concoction. (MARK LAUGHS) And later, surfers overseas wrote that they went to New Zealand looking for it and just could not find it. - Because it didn't exist! - Because it didn't exist. (LAID-BACK BLUESY MUSIC) - These days, Logan lives in Wainui, near Gisborne... - Hi, Logan. So, what were you after? - ...where he's very much part of the surf community. - I've given up a lot for surf photography. I never married or had children. I've worked, um, jobs that paid poorly, but they allowed me to live the life of a surf photographer. - He's still out there somewhere, hunting down Aotearoa's empty, secret surf spots. The international magazines are still buying, but he takes extra precautions these days. What was your closest shave? - Uh... a very angry farmer... (CHUCKLES) with` with a pump-action shotgun. (LAUGHS) - Mate, you're 71 years old. Why are you still doing this? - Yeah, again, it comes down to ` if you wanna be published in these prestigious magazines, you've gotta do things that are different to get the shot that is different. - The hordes of Californian surfers never invaded our shores, but this year, Jeff Hakman finally made it to New Zealand. - It's amazing there's not more people and it's not more crowded and there's not more... places being ruined. (CHUCKLES) - Shh, Jeff. Don't tell anybody. Let's just keep it between you and me. - OK. - Just recently, we took Logan back to the place he called Puni's Farm. The secret's out. Matakana Island gets a good crowd of surfers on days like this. - It looks similar, really similar, apart from the crowd. But it's as pretty as it ever was. Still a special place. - It was empty the last time Logan and Ernie were here 35 years ago. Are there other Puni's Farms out there to be discovered? - Yes. Yeah. There's still spots that have... not really been discovered in a true sense. Um, I go to a few of them myself. - So there really are unknown places still out there? - Seek and ye shall find. - Well, if you want to see a collection of Logan's greatest works, you can find them in his book Line-Up. E whai ake nei ` how a Willy Wonka experience became the butt of a global joke. - It looks more like Willy Wonka's abandoned auto factory. - The whole thing was absolutely shocking. - But the AI behind it is no laughing matter. - How quickly and how easily could someone have pulled this together? - Seconds. - Nau mai ano. You hear the name Willy Wonka, you probably think fun, magic and lots of chocolate. But for one Scottish entrepreneur, he was thinking cash. The plan was simple ` hire a warehouse, use AI to generate a magical world inside and take it to the bank. Instead, his show was such a disaster it became a global laughing stock. Adam Hegarty with this cautionary confectionery tale. - ADAM HEGARTY: Dreary Glasgow is a far cry from a Roald Dahl fantasy, so folk in Scotland's largest city were understandably excited when the magic of Willy Wonka was coming to town. - # Come with me, # and you'll be... # in a world of pure imagination. - This is what they expected and what they paid for. - A chocolate river! - The glossy advertisements promised kids the world... Mum Alana Lockens was among hundreds sucked in by the allure of a special day out for her Wonka-obsessed children. - We watched the films on a regular basis, so... they had quickly become, you know, quite big fans, and they were really excited. - A family of Wonka fans ` you must have felt like you struck gold. - Mm, well, a golden ticket, maybe, yeah. Youse want a treat? Close your eyes. No peeking. - So excited, Alana bought seven tickets to the Glasgow Willy Wonka Experience... for a staggering �165. - ...to the Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory Experience. - Can't wait to go to the factory. - When I first booked the tickets, it sounded pretty spectacular. Um... how wrong was I? (QUIRKY MUSIC) - On the morning of the event, the anticipation and excitement for waiting families had peaked. But the moment they walked through the event's doors, it all came crashing down. - What a waste of money. - It was no chocolate factory; it was a bleak, near-empty warehouse with plastic props, shabby banners taped to walls... - Oh, look. It's a chocolate river. - ...and a chocolate river made of cardboard. - Paid 40 pound a ticket for this. - It was all so absurd, their disappointment made global headlines. - The disastrous Willy's Chocolate Experience in Glasgow that went viral. - Some even called the police to complain. - Basically a big empty warehouse with vinyl backdrops tacked to the wall. - I mean, it was` it was pretty poor. It was pretty dire. It was like something that you would see maybe at a kid's birthday party, you know, not... an event that you've paid �35 a ticket for. - And, uh, no chocolate? - No. No, there wasn't. A few jellybeans... about an eighth of a cup of lemonade, and that was pretty much it. - Handing out those jelly beans was poor Kirsty Paterson, the now infamous sad Oompa Loompa. Nothing summed up the shambles more than this viral photo. Kirsty was one of several actors roped in for a bizarre performance. - CHILD: Nooo. - It was the jelly bean counter that looks like the meth lab. It was just shocking. The whole thing was absolutely shocking. I could've set that up two seconds in... my house, you know? It was awful. - So much of the Glasgow Wonka nightmare points to a much bigger problem ` the danger posed by artificial intelligence. All of the events, advertisements, even the actors' scripts, were computer-generated. Rebecca Johnson is an AI ethicist and researcher at the University of Sydney. She fears if hundreds were fooled by this, we're scarily vulnerable to a new age of high-tech trickery. - So, seeing that people can be duped by what I think is pretty low-level generated content, um, means that they're definitely at risk of being duped by more slick AI content that perhaps is political in nature or pretending to be a friend or pretending to be a bank, trying to get people's identity details or bank accounts or whatnot. That's the much bigger risk. - Children weren't the only ones duped; the actors were too. They had no hope of ever living up to the fantasy a computer concocted ` as much as they tried. - People say to me, 'Well, why didn't you just walk off? Like, I would've walked off.' And I'm like, it's not as easy as that when there's kids involved and they're walking in in their wee outfits and they're all excited and it's like their Christmas presents. - It seems like you were just trying to salvage just an absolute catastrophe. - I mean, a catastrophe is an understatement. I'd just say I tried my best, and it was just not... it was just impossible to salvage. Impossible. - What a waste of money. - The organisers were now faced with a warehouse full of distraught children and enraged parents. - You could hear the arguing. You could hear people getting angry. You could hear shouting. You could` You could` You knew it wasn't gonna end well at all. - Yep, a lot of anger, and all of it directed at one person. - I'm not a scam artist. I'm not a con man. I'm not anything like that. - E whai ake nei ` the man behind the mess. - People are owed an explanation. - ADAM HEGARTY: Looking back on what was promised, it's no surprise the Willy Wonka Experience in Glasgow was a gigantic failure. Much of the show was imagined by artificial intelligence, something the human organisers were never going to live up to. How quickly and how easily could someone have pulled this together? - Seconds. - AI expert Rebecca Johnson says it's so simple, anyone could have done it. - I can't imagine that this was some huge, calculated scam. I think it's someone that, you know, saw some tools that they could use, perhaps didn't really think through the implications of what they were doing. - The man responsible is Billy Coull. - I'm not a scam artist. I'm not a con man. I'm not anything like that. - Billy's event company, the House of Illuminati, delivered very little of what was expected. He's now full of excuses but claims he's no crook. - The venue itself was too large for what I wanted to do. I was gutted, but I believed that we could push on. The last thing that... I wanted to see was children being upset by, you know, frustrated parents. - You've scammed children. - Billy's disastrous event was shut down after just two hours. It was so bad the police were called. - So, the House of Illuminati guarantees... - The House of Illuminati tells lies. - Billy doubled down. He admits to using AI ` but not, he says, to con children. - The script itself was created and written by myself. However, let me be very, very... clear on this matter. I suffer with dyslexia. I had run it through AI to be able to check spelling, grammar and continuity. - 15 pages of confusing script were handed to actors the day before the Glasgow event. - 'Beans designed to help keep the wee ones clean, 'hot and spicy beans that ` lowers his voice ` attract the birds. Wink.' - (CHUCKLES) Excuse me. What was that? Reading through the script, it's clear it has all the hallmarks of an AI bot. - And the point is that the AI's not actually thinking anything. The AI is, you know, a model that's using mathematical formulas to just generate what is the next most plausible-sounding word or sentence in a piece of text. They're not as good as human eyes, because they don't have an understanding or a world view or a world context that a human writer would have. - Rebecca's worry is it shows how easily people could be duped by more sophisticated AI ` not just rip-offs and scams, but potentially fake political propaganda. - We've gone from something that was really very abstract to something that is very realistic and certainly realistic enough to be able to fool quite a lot of people. - So in five, 10 years' time, we could be sitting here, looking up here and not being able to tell the difference? - Oh, definitely. Definitely. - Glasgow's Willy Wonka ordeal is an example of what damage the misuse of AI can cause. Kids were shattered. Parents who spent big on hundreds of tickets were left out of pocket, and it cost Billy too. - As I said, we are going to start to issue full refunds... My life has been... turned up-down. My life is ruined. I was made out to be the face of all evil... when genuinely, that's really not the case. - Many families, though, still haven't received refunds, while actors have given up hope of ever getting their full wage. Despite that, they're embracing their newfound infamy. Hasn't turned you off acting, has it? - Oh, definitely not, no. That's my passion. I've done it for years. It's what I'm good at. And I suppose the benefits of this viral meme, it's given me other amazing opportunities with charities and working with kids and showcasing my actual talents. - Can turn any negative into a positive. - Well, what else... When you've been given lemon` Make it in` Is it` What's the saying again? - When you're given lemons, make lemonade. - When you've been given a lemon, make it into lemonade. You've got to. You've got to. - Well, in a truly bizarre turn of events, the Glasgow Wonka Experience is actually making a comeback ` this time in LA. Same sets, same jelly bean rations, and Kirsty will even reprise her role as the sad Oompa Loompa. At least proceeds this time are going to charity. That is us for this evening. We have two more excellent shows ahead with loads of local coverage. Do join us on social media in the meanwhile, or send us an email ` Sunday@tvnz.co.nz. And you can find our stories on the Sunday page at TVNZ+. Thanks for joining us this evening. Nga mihi nui. Hei kona.