AI fools thousands of people to show up for a fake Halloween parade

Apologies have already been issued by the people behind the event that misled thousands of Dubliners out of their homes to a fraudulent Halloween parade.

The Halloween parade was organized and listed on the My Spirit Halloween website, where it stated the Mácnas parade was occurring between 7pm and 9pm on Thursday last week. Thousands of people showed up to the event and reports by people on the ground, including video, show an incredibly busy street with many rows of people deep that are blocking traffic from using the road. Participants of the event were then informed by the Irish police that no event was happening and were ordered to disperse.

It now appears a member of the team organizing the event simply cut and pasted the notice for last year's event onto the calendar for 2024. Additionally, a Pakistan-based company has issued an apology to Dubliners for the phony event, claiming the mishap occurred due to "human error" on the website. A Pakistan-based man behind the website apologized to the misled people, saying he and his team is "highly depressed", "embarrassed," and "very sorry".

Since the marketing for the fake event circulated on social media, many who showed up for the event were quick to fire back My Spirit Halloween, alleging artificial intelligence-powered tools were used by the event holders to fool the public, and ultimately drive traffic to the website for ad revenue purposes.

"It was our mistake and we should have doubled checked it to make sure it was happening. But newspapers are reporting that we posted it intentionally and this is very, very wrong," said Nazir Ali

However, according to Ciarán O'Connor, a researcher and investigator at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, it appears My Spirit Halloween was set up for advertising revenue purposes. Moreover, a purported scheme was uncovered that connects My Spirit Halloween to multiple fake Facebook pages that were used to promote the campaign, stolen photos from real Mácnas parades, along with AI-generated text. Moreover, O'Connor said at least 30% of the content found on the website was made with the "assistance of AI".

Whether or not the website and the marketing campaign were created with the sole intention of generating advertising revenue through redirects back to the website's landing page, this story is an example of how AI-generated content coupled with human-made misinformation can result in thousands of people being misinformed about a topic. At its most fundamental, the situation highlights the power of misinformation, and perhaps the increased power of misinformation when its paired with AI-powered tools.