WPF GUI testing without having to give a key/name to every component?

My management asked me if there was some GUI tests that we could put in place to validate the end user interface reaction.

I'm personally not fan of GUI testing and would prefer to invest more time in UnitTesting of our services/ViewModel. The issue is that most of our old code is not very Service Oriented, making them hard to Unit Test. Also our management argue that doing GUI testing would allow to test the same exact binary we deliver to our customer.

I searched a bit, and until now, all engine seems to require that we name every of our components in order to have the tool able to identify which controls the UI tool has to interact with.

So my question, how would you start to make GUI testing with an existing set of applications in WPF?

Thank you very much