President Bola Tinubu has attracted public queries from Nigerians after posting an AI-generated image by Grok depicting him having lunch with Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame on Sunday.
The State House had announced on December 28 that Tinubu was travelling to Europe to continue his year-end holiday ahead of his participation at the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week.
Tinubu posted the image on X with a Grok watermark in the right-hand corner of the image. Grok is an AI fact-checking and content generation tool owned by X.
Tagging Kagame’s handle, Tinubu wrote on X, “This afternoon, I had a private lunch with H. E. President Paul Kagame of Rwanda to discuss the current state of world affairs and advancing Africa in an ever-changing global landscape.”
His aides equally shared the same image on their X handles with different captions.
Many Nigerians had spotted the AI sign and questioned why the presidency resorted to an AI-created image for the presidential engagement.
“President Bola Tinubu at a private lunch in Paris with the President of the Republic of Rwanda, Paul Kagame,” Segun Dada, Tinubu’s Special Assistant on Social Media, wrote.
NIGERIANS DOUBT THE MEETING TOOK PLACE
The involvement of Grok in generating the image casts doubts in the minds of many that the meeting actually took place.
“Why are you posting fake images?” Ola asked Dada.
Similarly, Ataga commented that Tinubu’s media aide generated AI pictures of his boss in “a meeting that never happened”.
Nwokem, another citizen who commented, said, “They used AI to generate a fake picture. Fraudulent people. You should have cropped out the Grok logo. Ndi oshi.”
For Ebenezer, they doubted the competence of the president’s media team, asking, “How do you employ such a daft and incompetent media team that they couldn’t notice and crop off the Grok watermark?”
The presidency is yet to confirm if the image was altered, edited or fabricated by Grok.
The AI-generated image remained on the president’s and aides’ handles at press time.
But there was nothing about the meeting on the East African country’s president’s timeline when FIJ checked at press time. Kagame’s most recent post on X was on December 27.
‘GROK USED TO EDIT IT’
Temitope Ajayi, an aide to the president on media and publicity, admitted the role of Grok in the image, saying the AI tool was only used “used grok to improve the picture quality”.
The clarification was compelled by media reports and social media backlash spotlighting the issue.
“The media report and social media comments that followed are misrepresentation of facts. The picture is real and not AI generated as claimed,” Ajayi wrote.
“The two leaders later had dinner with President Macron same yesterday evening. The picture was taken with a phone and obviously had poor quality.
“The photographer only later used grok to improve the picture quality. That is not a reason to conclude it was AI generated.”
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