AI keynote speaker · Mentalist · Conferences and leadership meetings
Forty-five to sixty minutes in which a working artificial intelligence shares the stage with a mentalist, reads the room, predicts its choices and gets things wrong in front of everyone. For audiences that have sat through enough slides about AI and would like to see one think.
In one sentence
A keynote in which the audience watches an AI work, live, with a mentalist who explains its workings as a storyteller rather than a consultant. Written for executive committees, conventions and leadership meetings that want to understand artificial intelligence without an hour of PowerPoint. Hugo Marceau is the AI magician behind it: a professional mentalist since 2010, based in Lyon, France, performing in English and French across Europe and worldwide on request.
The problem with AI on stage
If you have run a leadership meeting for five years, you have already booked three AI speakers. A slide on the history of OpenAI. A slide comparing the chatbots. A slide of use cases in banking, logistics and HR. And at the end your team walks out nodding, and does nothing different on Monday morning.
The content was not the problem; the numbers were probably right. The problem is that the AI stayed abstract: seen from a distance, described by someone who has visibly never put one in front of a live audience. The room confuses hearing about artificial intelligence with seeing an artificial intelligence act. The bet behind this keynote is simple. If you want your executives to understand AI, show them one that does something. Not a slide that describes it.
So Hugo walks on as a mentalist. For ten minutes he reads what people in the audience are thinking and predicts choices they have not yet made, the way mentalists have for a century and a half. The room smiles, intrigued, and wonders what this has to do with the AI in the programme. Then he hands the microphone to the artificial intelligence that has been listening from the wings. It reads the audience from the signals he passed it, predicts in its turn, reasons out loud. What looked like a mentalism act turns into a live demonstration of what a contemporary AI can do: vision, language, reasoning, memory, staged instead of bullet-pointed.
Running order
Act 1 · 0 to 10 min
No technical introduction. Three people in the audience think of something; Hugo names it, then predicts choices they are about to make. The AI is not on stage yet. The aim is total attention, and the first hint that something in the room exceeds explanation.
Act 2 · 10 to 35 min
Live image recognition, dialogue with the audience, predictions on concrete cases, reasoning shown step by step. The room moves from "is this rigged?" to "is the AI really doing that?", which is exactly the question the rest of the talk answers.
Act 3 · 35 to 50 min
Out of demonstration mode, plain speech. What genuinely works today, what is still promise despite the noise, where your likely competitors are, and what it means for your teams' jobs over the next twelve months. The audience listens differently now: it has just seen an AI, and has its own sense of what one can do.
Act 4 · 50 to 60 min
Open exchange. Precise questions from the floor, Hugo's in return, and the AI summoned again when a point needs proving rather than asserting. Often the most revealing part of the session: this is where your teams show what they are thinking.
Two minutes of it
A longer cut and references are sent with the proposal.
Three formats
Format 1
The standard format for a conference opening, a convention plenary or a leadership meeting: ten minutes of mentalism, twenty-five of AI demonstrations, twenty of strategic perspective, then questions. Built for audiences from fifty to a thousand.
Format 2
For an executive committee or a business unit of ten to thirty people. Deeper demonstrations, more interaction, and a long question-and-answer session on your own use cases. Often booked as the follow-up to a short keynote.
Format 3
The talk in the morning session, then close-up mentalism among the guests at the dinner. One performer gives the whole seminar day a thread, and the organiser has one person to coordinate instead of two.
Who books it
What the audience leaves with
Why this keynote and not another
Hugo is not the only person talking about AI to companies. He is one of very few who show it working on stage, with no edit, in front of an audience that can interrupt, doubt and check. Three things set the keynote apart. He held a stage for ten years before he put an AI on one, and it shows in how the room is handled. The AI is a character, not a backdrop: it talks back, it sometimes gets it wrong, it surprises, because it is live and not a pre-recorded workflow. And there is no commercial agenda behind the talk: Hugo sells the keynote, not a software product, which is what allows him to speak plainly about the limits of each technology.
Organiser's review · leadership seminar
"The audience leaves with a visceral understanding, not just a theoretical one. The combination of mentalism and AI is formidably effective." One of 178 verified Google reviews, translated from the French.
Clients across sectors
More than 350 documented talks and performances in France and abroad, in French and English. Conference names are shared during the enquiry when the client allows it, and never published otherwise.
Tailor-made for your audience
Fees on request. Every keynote is tailored to the format, the audience, the venue and the travel involved.
Prefer to talk first? +33 6 88 61 29 00, WhatsApp welcome, English and French. Agencies and conference producers: see the page written for you.
Before you enquire
A futurist tells the audience what AI will do; this keynote shows them what it does, live, with a room that can interrupt and check. Hugo Marceau is a mentalist first: ten years of holding a stage before he ever put an AI on it. The artificial intelligence is a character in the talk, not a slide, and there is no software product being sold behind the keynote, which is why the limits of each technology can be discussed honestly.
Yes, every time. One or two briefing calls with the organiser, then the demonstrations and the strategic section are written around your sector, your use cases and the questions your audience is actually asking. The mentalist-plus-AI structure is the backbone; the content is yours.
A sound system with a headset microphone, a screen or projector with an HDMI input, a stable internet connection and a playing area of about three metres by two. The AI and its infrastructure travel with Hugo. A one-page rider comes with the proposal.
Yes. The talk is delivered in English or French, or bilingual for mixed rooms. The AI itself speaks the language of the room. For an international room the talk is given in English; rooms that mix several languages are handled bilingually without losing anyone.
A shorter online version exists, 30 to 45 minutes, with effects designed for the camera rather than transposed from the stage. The live version remains stronger, because physical participation is part of what convinces the audience.
Fees are quoted on request and depend on the format (keynote, workshop or keynote plus evening performance), the venue, the audience and the customisation. Every proposal is one all-inclusive figure, with the briefing calls, the content design, the AI infrastructure and travel included. No price list, no hidden percentage.
Ask. The backbone of the keynote is ready and the customisation takes one or two calls, so short-notice dates are often possible when the calendar allows it. An answer on availability comes the same day.
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