Nigerian Presidency threatens legal action over fake AI audio

The Presidency has threatened legal action against social media commentator Martins Vincent Otse, known as VeryDarkMan, over the circulation of an alleged AI-generated audio clip falsely attributed to President Bola Tinubu. The threat was issued on Wednesday by Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga.

Onanuga called for the activist to face the full weight of the law, describing the dissemination of the audio as an egregious abuse of social media. The controversial clip features a voice mimicking President Tinubu making inflammatory claims, including that insecurity in Nigeria would continue because citizens did not vote for him in the 2023 election. The fabricated audio also contained statements alleging deliberate insecurity in the country's southeast and that loans from the World Bank were being used to fund political campaigns.

However, subsequent findings indicate the viral audio was not part of Otse's original social media post. Investigations show an unidentified individual extracted footage from the commentator's video and superimposed the AI-generated audio before recirculating it online. The original video featured Otse reacting to...