A website created by AI convinced thousands of people in Ireland to attend a fake Halloween Parade, demonstrating how unprepared we are to AI misinformation

Dublin. The spire is filled with events, gigs, and nightlife. I get a tinge of nostalgia when I look at it, thanks to my time spent there pursuing my degree. After seeing the crowds of people waiting for a Halloween Parade that never came, I was glad I wasn't there this week.

The parade in Dublin, Ireland was never held. Thousands of people gathered around O'Connell Street to watch a parade that never happened. The site that claims to have started this parade is called Myspirithalloween and appears to have stolen the name from Spirit Halloween, a Halloween retailer that focuses on costumes, decorations and general festivities.

The attached Facebook page deleted all of its posts, and its Pinterest page uses fake Mr Beast giveaways to promote (also fake) events. The original Dublin Halloween Parade page appears to have also been deleted from the site, but there are plenty of other Irish events that are advertised there, some of them seeming to be real.

Myspirithalloween is awash with ads, and there is a lot of AI-generated material on its Pinterest and Facebook pages. You could argue that this is a way to create fake events in order to increase page views. The presence of thousands of words written about real events and the ads on the website suggests that this is simply an aggregator using an AI tool that scrapes data from the web and categorizes it as it sees best.

I could not personally verify that the website was the one who made the claims about a Dublin parade, but it appears to have spread the rumors. Screenshots of searches done near the time of event show the site had some presence on Google.

It's unlikely that many people in the street saw the original site, but enough did to share it with passersby. O'Connell Street has many businesses and is a popular place for commuters who use the Luas tram or bus.

It is alarming that someone who has access to an AI model can cause such a large-scale panic. And the thousands of people who wasted their precious time in a crowded area must regret it. Even the Irish police, the Garda siochana, had to issue a statement regarding the parade.

It's important to remember the human element in this and how you may not fall victim to AI misinformation, whether malicious or not. Information is spread by strangers who are merely waiting for a fun night out.