AI promoted a Halloween parade in Dublin, Ireland and thousands of people showed up. One problem: the parade didn’t exist.

As reported by The Independent (Chaos in Dublin as thousands turn up for AI ‘hoax’ Halloween parade that didn’t exist, written by Barney Davis and available here), thousands of people lined the streets of Dublin eagerly anticipating a Halloween Parade through the city centre – but it never arrived.

The decked-out Dubliners had been tricked by a listing on a AI-generated website based in Pakistan that announced the spooky festival before news of it quickly spread online.

The My Spirit Halloween website falsely advertised the Macnas Halloween Parade would take place from 7pm to 9pm, with interest in it seeing the news ranking on Google.

But when thousands appeared to turn up to line the route from Parnell Street to Christchurch Cathedral, it slowly became clear to those waiting that there was no event.

The situation forced Irish police (known as the “Gardaí”) to put out a message for those waiting on O’Connell Street to “disperse safely”.

The My Spirit Halloween listing appeared to have been taken down the morning after Halloween. The site curates Halloween events spanning the globe.

The article has a picture of a large crowd of Dubliners waiting outside for the parade. Alas, when AI promoted a Halloween parade in Dublin, it turned out that the information was “blarney”. 😀 Now we have another punchline for the joke: “How do you keep a thousand Irish busy for an hour?” 🤣

So, what do you think? Have you been duped by AI-generated information online? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Image created using GPT-4o’s Image Creator Powered by DALL-E, using the term “crowd of robots in Dublin, Ireland waiting on the side of the road for a parade with no people”.

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