The Presidency has issued a formal clarification regarding a controversial photograph of President Bola Tinubu and Rwandan President Paul Kagame, insisting the image was a genuine photo enhanced by artificial intelligence rather than a completely AI-generated fabrication.
The statement, released on Monday by Temitope Ajayi, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, addressed a wave of social media criticism and a “Community Note” on X (formerly Twitter) that flagged the image as deceptive. The controversy began on Sunday, January 4, 2026, after the President’s official handle shared a photo of the two leaders at a private lunch in Paris, which featured a visible watermark from Grok, an AI tool developed by Elon Musk’s xAI.
According to Ajayi, the meeting between the two leaders actually took place on Sunday as part of the President’s ongoing European break. He explained that the original photograph was captured on a mobile phone and suffered from poor lighting and low resolution. To make the image suitable for official communication, the photographer used the Grok AI tool to improve the quality.
“The narrative that the picture was AI-generated is not correct,” Ajayi stated. “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 Presidency confirmed that Presidents Tinubu and Kagame shared a lunch on Sunday afternoon to discuss international developments and African strategic interests. Later that same evening, both leaders joined French President Emmanuel Macron for dinner.
President Tinubu has been in Europe since December 28, 2025, for an end-of-year break. He is expected to travel to the United Arab Emirates shortly to participate in the 2026 Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ADSW) Summit at the invitation of President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
The incident has sparked a broader debate in Nigeria regarding the use of generative AI tools in official government documentation. Critics argued that even if the meeting was real, using AI to “touch up” photos of heads of state could blur the lines of authenticity and erode public trust, especially given the high prevalence of deepfakes in modern politics.
Journalists were criticized by the Presidency for not verifying the origin of the watermark before labeling the entire event as a fabrication. Despite the clarification, the “Grok” watermark remains a point of discussion for digital forensics experts who suggest that AI enhancement can sometimes inadvertently alter physical details, leading to the “uncanny valley” effect noticed by social media users.
