Page 14 - IAV Digital Magazine #606

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
AI Hoax Causes Thousands To Show Up In Dublin, Ireland, For Non-existent Halloween Parade
By Doug Cunningham
Nov. 1 (UPI) -
- Thousands of peo- ple, deceived by an AI-generated Pakistan-based web- site that quickly spread online, lined the streets of Dublin, Ireland, for a Halloween parade that didn't exist.
The website My Spirit Halloween falsely
promoted a Macnas Halloween Parade, leading large swaths of people to gather on the streets.
Macnas is a perform- ing arts group that had staged Halloween parades in Dublin since 2013. The COVID-19 pan- demic stopped those parades until last year, but the group had not scheduled one in 2024.
Initial crowds were in the hundreds and appeared to swell into thousands.
"It seems to be an online scam. It's real- ly sad to see that people are being scammed. Everyone is trying to have a fun and safe Halloween. Having a parade to go to sounded really good," Sinn
Fein councillor Janice
Boylan said.
"I know an awful lot of people turned up. It's a terrible pity that there is people out there that are trying to scam people."
The thousands who showed up waited for about an hour before it dawned on them there was no parade.
They gathered on O'Connell Street near Parnell Street in
Dublin's city center. The hoax claimed the parade would start there and end at Christchurch Cathedral.
As they began trying to clear the streets, the Irish police force known as Gardai put out a statement that said, "Please be advised that contrary to information being circulated online, no Halloween parade is scheduled to take place in Dublin city center this evening or tonight."
The festival of Diwali was happening in Dublin as the fake parade crowd showed up.
The website that touted the fake parade appeared to have removed the listing Friday morn- ing.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xsDO_NOUAeM
iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine