Trump State Department Apologizes for Presenting Totally Botched AI-Generated Map That Mislabeled Every African Country at AIDS Conference

(AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

The U.S. State Department was forced to apologize after presenting an AI-generated map that erroneously labeled every country in Africa to a group of attendees at an AIDS conference in Rio on Thursday.

Reuters reviewed footage of the presentation and noted “the errant map displayed halfway during a presentation about the State Department’s new health agreements.” A Reuters analysis of the presentation revealed a watermark that indicates it was put together with assistance from OpenAI tools.

Reuters also reported the State Department said it took “full responsibility” for the mistake, which it attributed to “a team member who hastily changed ‌the slide deck before the event.”

Screenshots of the map shared by attendee Emily Bass via Substack indicate that Nigeria, which borders the continent’s coast, appears to be completely landlocked; the western nation of Côte d’Ivoire was instead placed in the southeast.

Per Bass, the map was presented by a “senior” member of the State Department and was part of the “Transforming health assistance: Implementing U.S. government MOUs for sustainable HIV programs” presentation. Bass also noted the “Director General of Nigeria” was in attendance.

The same presentation also included a slide about Emergency Operation Centers (EOCs), which are also known as Public Health Emergency Operations Centers (PHEOCs). Bass described the PHEOCs as “physical spaces that function as the centralized location for overall coordination of emergency operations.”

“The State Department highlighted Malawi’s PHEOC on the slide, without acknowledging that CDC’s central role in the country’s PHEOC as recently as last year—with technical support Government of Malawi touts on its website,” Bass noted. She later added, “There are other instances, not captured in slides, in which Department of State leadership made statements that seek to rewrite recent history. One US government representative said that the fact that the US data system, DATIM, went off line for a brief period showed weakness in the current approach and underscored the need for investment in national systems.”

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