The Presidency has denied report that a viral picture shared on Sunday, which had President Bola Tinubu having dinner with Paul Kagame of Rwanda, was AI-generated.
Tinubu reportedly met with Kagame on Sunday in Paris, France.
According to TheCable, the Grok watermark could be seen in a picture of the meeting shared on Tinubu’s X account.
Grok is a generative Artificial Intelligence (generative AI) chatbot developed by xAI, Elon Musk’s company. It’s used for real-time search, generating images, and other functions.
Grok logo at the base of the image
Dada Olusegun, Special Assistant on New Media to the President, also shared the same image.
Several Nigerians on Twitter criticised the presidential aide over the development, accusing him of sharing an “AI-generated image” of the meeting.
However, in a statement shared on his Facebook page after originally posting the initial statement, Presidential Aide, Bayo Onanuga, posted a rebuttal from Temitope Ajayi, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity.
“The narrative that the picture of Presidents Bola Tinubu and Paul Kagame taken in Paris yesterday was AI generated is not correct.” it stated.
“The media report and social media comments that followed are misrepresentation of facts.
“The picture is real and not AI generated as claimed.
“Both President Kagame and President Tinubu met in Paris had lunch together on Sunday (yesterday).
“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.
“The writer or editor should have asked questions before this wrong conclusion.”
