Pakistani company apologizes for directing Dubliners to non-existent Halloween event | Ireland

A Pakistan-based company has apologized to Dubliners after a “human error” on the event website led to thousands of people turning up on the Irish capital’s main drag for a non-existent Halloween parade.

Footage on Thursday evening showed crowds of people lining both sides of O’Connell Street waiting for a pretend parade of giant Halloween dolls created by one of Ireland’s best-known theater groups, the Galway performance company Mácnas.

Filmmaker Bertie Brosnan said: “I was there filming for 40 minutes. From Parnell Square West – on either side of the street – people were packed five to ten, all the way to the corner, up to the spire. There were thousands. The Luas (tram line) was completely blocked on both lines.”

The crowd had come to see the event listed on the My Spirit Halloween website. As the stunned crowd dispersed by gardaí, who told them that no such parade was taking place, they suspected a scam, or some seasonal trick.

But the company behind the website now says the fake event was neither. Instead, it was simple human error.

The website falsely advertised that the Mácnas Parade would take place on Thursday between 7pm and 9pm, after a member of their team cut and pasted the announcement for last year’s event and inserted it into this year’s calendar.

The site, which aggregates content from around the world, was one of the highest-ranking Google Halloween entries in the days leading up to October 31, and word of the parade was shared widely on social media.

The Pakistan-based man behind the site has since apologized, saying he was “depressed” and “ashamed.” “We are very ashamed and very depressed and deeply regret it,” Nazir Ali told the Irish Times.

“It was our fault and we should have double checked to make sure it happened. But newspapers are reporting that we posted it deliberately and that is very wrong,” Ali said.

After the mistake became apparent to people who attended the event, there was a wave of amusement on social media – but also warnings about the dangers of AI disinformation and deepfakes.

Some joked that a ‘parade committee’ should be set up, as in Northern Ireland. Belfast journalist Allison Morris said on social media that she “laughed at the fake parade story” but it showed “how easy it is to spread misinformation”.

One user on

Gary Gannon, a Social Democrat TD – a member of parliament – ​​said it showed the power of disinformation and deepfakes. He was referring to a deepfake of Taylor Swift endorsing Kerry politician Michael Healy-Rae.

“That was quite funny, but suddenly when that becomes something more serious and people are putting out AI images of me, for example saying something that I would never say that goes against my own values, that is something that is not . too far from the horizon,” he told RTÉ.