Presidency Denies AI Claims Over Tinubu-Kagame Paris Photo

The Nigerian Presidency has rejected claims that a recently released photograph of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu with Rwandan President Paul Kagame in Paris was artificially generated.

In a statement on Monday, Temitope Ajayi, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, attributed the controversy to the low quality of the original photo, which was taken on a phone during the leaders’ meeting on Sunday.

“The narrative that the picture of Presidents Bola Tinubu and Paul Kagame taken in Paris yesterday was AI generated is not correct,” Ajayi said. “The media reports and social media comments suggesting otherwise are a misrepresentation of facts. The picture is real and was not AI generated.”

Ajayi clarified that the two leaders had lunch together in Paris and later attended a dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron on the same day. He explained that the photograph, initially of poor quality due to the phone camera used, was later enhanced with the image editing tool Grok to improve clarity.

“The photographer only used Grok to enhance the image quality. This is not a reason to conclude it was AI generated,” Ajayi emphasized.

Earlier, SaharaReporters had reported that the image circulated by the Presidency, showing Tinubu in a private meeting with Kagame, sparked debate online after users noticed a “Grok” watermark, a signature of Elon Musk’s AI tool for real-time search and image creation.

The photo, which went viral on social media, was shared via President Tinubu’s official X (formerly Twitter) account to announce the high-level engagement in Paris, but the watermark led to speculation that the image had been artificially created.