AI Magician · Mentalist · Keynote speaker
A live act where a working artificial intelligence predicts, sees and reasons with your guests, and a mentalist explains what it does to our perception. For conferences, product launches and gala dinners. France, Switzerland and wherever your event takes place.
Enquire about your eventIn one paragraph
An AI magician is a live performer who uses a working artificial intelligence as part of a magic or mentalism act. The AI is not a video or a prop: it listens to the room, predicts people's choices, recognises what it sees and answers in real time, and the magician builds the illusion around what it does. The same words are used for chatbots and marketing tools sold under that name. This page is about the stage act.
What the audience sees
The act opens the way a mentalism show does: a guest thinks of a word, a memory, a decision nobody in the room could know, and Hugo gets there first. Then the second performer joins. An artificial intelligence, visible on the screen, with a voice, a personality and no script.
From that point the two share the stage. The AI predicts which card a guest in row six will choose before she stands up. It looks at a drawing made by someone in the third row and names what they were thinking about while they drew it. It is asked to lie, and the mentalist catches it. It is asked a question nobody prepared, and it answers in the vocabulary of your industry, because it was briefed on your business the week before.
Nothing is pre-recorded. The dialogue runs on language models of the Claude or GPT class, the visual demonstrations on computer vision, and a custom agent orchestrates the whole thing live. That is why the guests' choices change the outcome, and why a room full of people who have sat through five AI presentations this quarter suddenly leans forward: for once, the AI is doing something in front of them instead of being described.
The mentalist's role is the one that makes it a show rather than a demo. He frames what the machine does, exposes the gap between what we think we perceive and what we actually perceive, and keeps the room laughing while it is being fooled.
Ninety seconds of it
Three ways to book the act
The full act, built around a message: how perception works, why we trust machines, what changes when an AI sits at the table. Written with your agenda in mind, so the keynote opens or closes the day on the theme the rest of the programme is about. Running order, formats and booking on the AI keynote speaker page.
Less talk, more impossibility. The AI and the mentalist against the room, between the main course and dessert, with your guests as the protagonists. The version most often booked for the evening of a conference whose keynote was in the morning. See also the mentalism stage show.
The AI fits in a tablet. Hugo moves from group to group, and the screen stops obeying the rules of the physical world: objects move between the iPad and a guest's hand, the AI reads a name from a face, a drawing becomes a prediction. Details on the iPad close-up, the tech magician page and trade show pages.
Why event teams book it
Where it comes from
The idea of a machine designing an illusion is not new. A decade ago, computer scientists at Queen Mary University of London trained an algorithm to design a card trick and a jigsaw puzzle illusion by combining probability theory, cognitive psychology and machine learning to model how much visual change a spectator fails to notice; the puzzle sold out in a London magic shop and the research was published in a peer-reviewed journal. The machine was good at the mathematics of deception. It had no idea how to hold a room.
That is the gap this act lives in. Artificial intelligence is good at prediction and language. Mentalism is good at attention and timing, at the moment when a hundred people realise at once that something impossible has just happened. Put the two on the same stage and each covers what the other cannot do. The room gets the rare experience of watching an AI work in real time, with a human beside it who knows exactly where their attention is.
Hugo Marceau has performed mentalism professionally since 2010 and built the AI act once language models became fast enough to answer on stage without a pause. The act is updated as the technology moves, which also means the version booked this season is not the one booked last year.
Tailor-made for your next event
Fees on request. Every engagement is tailored to the format, the guests, the venue and the travel involved.
Based in Lyon, France. Under two hours from Geneva by road, one flight from Nice, Paris and most European capitals. +33 6 88 61 29 00, WhatsApp welcome.
Questions asked before booking
A live performer who uses a working artificial intelligence as part of a magic or mentalism act. The AI listens, predicts, sees and answers in front of the guests, and the magician builds the illusion around what it does. The term is also used for chatbots sold under that name; this page is about the stage act.
Real. Language models for the dialogue, computer vision for the visual demonstrations, a custom agent to orchestrate them live. The guests' choices change what happens, which a recording could not do.
Yes, and it should be. The AI is briefed on your industry, your product names and your audience. Four to eight weeks allow a fully tailored version; a lighter customisation is possible in two to three weeks.
A 45 to 60 minute keynote, a 30 to 60 minute stage show, and a strolling close-up version with an iPad for receptions and trade shows. The keynote and the evening show are often booked together for the same day.
A screen or projector with HDMI input, a sound system with one wireless microphone, and a stable internet connection or 4G/5G signal. The set-up travels in cabin luggage and installs in under an hour. A technical rider comes with every proposal.
Fees are quoted on request and tailored to the format, the duration, the number of guests, the venue and the travel involved. Send the details of your event and you will receive a proposal within one business day.
Yes. In English or French, and the AI itself answers in either language, which makes bilingual conventions easy to handle.
Hugo Marceau, mentalist and AI magician · Corporate event entertainment · About Hugo Marceau · What is mentalism