The presidency says a recent picture of President Bola Tinubu and Rwandan President Paul Kagame was not generated through an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool.
On Sunday, Tinubu posted a picture of himself at lunch with the Rwandan president.
The Nigerian leader reportedly met with Kagame in Paris, France.
The Grok watermark could be seen on the bottom right of the picture shared by Tinubu and his aides via X.
Grok is a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by xAI, Elon Musk’s company.
The AI tool is often used for real-time search, generating images, and other functions. Oftentimes, X users tag Grok to interpret posts and generate images.
The Tinubu-Kagame photograph elicited mixed reactions, with many Nigerians criticising the president for “faking the meeting with an AI-generated image”.
‘PICTURE TAKEN WITH PHONE’
Reacting to the development, Temitope Ajayi, senior special assistant to the president on media and publicity, said Tinubu and Kagame had lunch in Paris on Sunday.
Ajayi said the picture was taken using a phone and that the initial quality was poor.
The presidential aide said the photographer only used Grok to improve the quality of the picture.
“The narrative that the picture of Presidents Bola Tinubu and Paul Kagame taken in Paris yesterday was AI-generated is not correct,” the statement reads.
“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).
“They both 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.”
About the Author
