An organizer of an upcoming software and developer conference called DevTernity has been accused of cooking up fake women speakers featured on the event’s website — AI-generated headshots and all.

It looks a lot like a horrifically misfired attempt to pad out the apparent diversity in a heavily male-dominated space, a hypothesis the event’s organizer Eduards Sizovs has since forcefully denied.

The bizarre development triggered a resounding outcry, leading to high-profile engineering leaders from the likes of Microsoft and Google to bow out of the conference.