Eshioromeh Sebastian in Abuja
The Presidency has issued a firm rebuttal against claims circulating online that a photograph of President Bola Tinubu with his Rwandan counterpart, President Paul Kagame, was generated by artificial intelligence (AI). The office has labelled such reports as a “misrepresentation of facts.”
The controversy began after a picture from a meeting between the two leaders in Paris on Sunday was published. Some social media commentators and media outlets questioned the image’s authenticity, suggesting it was AI-generated due to Grok sign on it.
In a statement issued on Monday, Temitope Ajayi, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, clarified the sequence of events.
He confirmed that President Tinubu and President Kagame indeed met in Paris, first for a lunch meeting on Sunday, and later joined French President Emmanuel Macron for dinner the same evening.
Ajayi explained that the photograph in question was initially taken with a mobile phone, resulting in “poor quality.” To improve the image for public release, a photographer later used an AI-powered tool, Grok, to enhance its clarity and detail.
“The photographer only later used Grok to improve the picture quality. That is not a reason to conclude it was AI-generated,” Ajayi stated.
The presidential aide criticised the rush to judgment, asserting that proper journalistic diligence was lacking.
“The writer or editor should have asked questions before this wrong conclusion,” he added, emphasizing that the core fact—the meeting and the photograph—was entirely authentic, with AI used only for post-production enhancement.
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