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Comment by dudus | Hacker News Reader

I just signed up for this genAI summit but the lack of social buzz and the profile of the organizers give me a strange feeling.

https://genaisummit.ai/#/

I'm afraid this is might be a fake conference created by AI. Am I crazy? I paid $500 for tickets. I almost signed up for the booth.

I'll have to start emailing speakers for confirmation because it's not passing the smell test.

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Why did you sign up for a conference if you’re so uncertain as to its credibility and content? Is this an employer-sponsored outing?

I thought it was cheap. It said last tickets. I don't know ... that was stupid.

It looked interesting at first. But when I started to research more I didn't find any buzz.

I reported the event to eventbrite

sounds like you're getting cold feet from a sense of guilt for falling pray to fomo.

Huh, I had no idea that people signed up for these things on this basis. Possibly explains why there are so many weird conferences out there; if you build it, they will apparently come, without even first checking what it is.

It says "Sponsored by Microsoft AI Co-Innovation Lab".

You could try emailing them (aiotlabs@microsoft.com, from their website) and asking whether they're really sponsoring that conference.

https://www.palaceoffinearts.org/event/genai-summit Has the event listed

The Palace of Fine Arts is a theater, not an exhibit hall. It's a completely unsuitable location for a conference.

Conference, yes. Sales pitch and/or hype presentation, no.

It may be real?

Edit: down below it says this theater will Host a conference of 30k people. No it won't. This is a scam.

I don't think this is true. My startup had a couple desks in the Palace of Fine Arts when they had an ill-fated attempt to convert part of it to a co-working space. They shut down co-working to turn it into a full-time event space. The building is basically one giant room, with a raised mezzanine floating above part of the floor. It has one small permanent theater on the north end, and they convert the southern end into a larger theater for music shows, and this is the seating chart being shown in the above link (I saw a Ninja Sex Party show there one time, but this theater isn't reflected on the tour photos. When I was working there in 2016 it was an exhibit for Hunger Games).

https://palaceoffinearts.com/tour/

The event link makes it look like it's just referring to the theater. It even mentions a "door time".

Even if it is the whole hall (which used to be the Exploratorium, back in the day), there's still no way in hell they'd get 30,000 people inside. According to https://palaceoffinearts.com/info/, the maximum capacity of the facility is 5,000, and even that would be very crowded.

> there's still no way in hell they'd get 30,000 people inside

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that would be physically impossible, unless they are planning on hosting most of the conference on the grounds, parking lot and maybe surrounding streets.

>> The Palace of Fine Arts is a theater, not an exhibit hall. It's a completely unsuitable location for a conference.

This is not the case -- The Palace of Fine Arts is an excellent conference location - expansive and with mezz levels for private presentations, etc. I've done several conferences there and also presented.

It has beautiful outdoor garden spaces for relaxed 1:1s and doesnt feel at all like SF as most people imagine.

Instagram and Twitter links in footer don’t work… I’d do a chargeback with your credit card

Same. This is the twitter link https://twitter.com/GPTDAOGLOBAL

30,000 attendees for a conference is MASSIVE. Like a GDC or SEMA or something. One of the biggest in the world. Unless it's happened before, then I have a hard time believing they just spun this up out of nowhere.

Edit: Would also have more sponsors. 2k to sponsor that/get a booth is WAAAAAY to cheap.

Edit2: Also one of the sessions is. "... text2video, text2audio, text2multimodal, text2richcontent" Sounds like a ChatGPT thing. Wild that they used, like you said, Ai, to generate an AI conference and genAI. Very meta

Capacity of venue is 950: https://www.palaceoffinearts.org/seating

GPTDAO eh? Only missing NFT and FSD.

It's listed on the Palace of Fine Arts page, so GPTDAO has booked the space for the event. Last year's event was at SCC, and had 1,500 people, so they're expecting 3,000, not 30,000. I'd email them to tell them about their typo, but it's real.

https://www.palaceoffinearts.org/event/genai-summit

Apparently, it happened in 2023[1] (with a much more modest 1500 people claimed in attendance) but I can't find any photos.

Good luck with the charge-back. I'm sure your bank will eventually be accommodating after you explain what happened and jump through enough hoops.

[1] https://sv2023.genaisummit.ai/

EDIT: I found these photos, but don't have a linkedin, so I can't verify anything about the presenter:

https://images.app.goo.gl/UaVfRUAU8YnQrmek6

https://images.app.goo.gl/yszbyq8fhEvoHcfi6

https://images.app.goo.gl/1ybWTJ4wPhuHt5R16

EDIT 2: It seems to be this person, who appears to have worked at microsoft last year : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMSu0gmlD3w

Maybe it is fine after all?

I'm a bit confused about your reasons for signing up, but it looks real to me. It could be with all the buzz around AI it really did see a large surge in interest. I'd be interested to hear from the founders and how they managed to grow so quickly.

Fake conferences is not a new scam, I saw many of them in 2020 at least. Almost fell for one. It's sad and I feel for you if it's fake but it's probably not "created by AI".

(and it would be "created with" at best, it's people who do things)

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