Fake AI-generated woman on tech conference agenda leads Microsoft and Amazon execs to drop out

NEW YORK (AP) — Tech executives at Microsoft and Amazon have dropped out of an upcoming software conference after at least one of the women on the agenda turned out to be fake. After being confronted about suspicious profiles on his conference websites that appeared to be generated by artificial intelligence, DevTernity organizer Eduards Sizovs admitted on social media that one of the featured speakers was an “auto-generated” woman with a fake title. But he denied that the fake profile was intended to mask the “worse-than-expected level of diversity of speakers” in this year’s lineup and refused to apologize in a series of posts on X.