The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has placed blame on some of its registration officers for bringing suspected artificial intelligence-generated photographs and other irregularities into the preliminary voters’ register.
Dr Lawrence Bayode, INEC’s Director of Information and Communication Technology, revealed this on Friday in an interview on Arise Television, noting that certain registration officers used their login credentials to insert questionable records into the commission’s database.
Bayode stated that the irregularities came to light through the commission’s Automated Biometric Identification System, which was used to scrutinize the registration records.
“We have registration officers on the field and these registration officers have login details to log into the system.
“So what we have found is that some of these registration officers, not all of them now, some of them across the states nationwide, they’ve done different things to bring these irregularities onto the register,” he said.
He noted that while some of the photographs were generated using artificial intelligence, others were products of poor registration procedures.
“Some of these pictures are AI-generated. Some of them are not AI-generated, but they have very bad registration. And this thing got into the register by the registration officers because they have access to register people,” Bayode said.
The ICT director also mentioned that the commission had identified the questionable records and established how some of the irregularities occurred but could not determine the reasons behind the actions of the officers involved.
“When the ABIS was run on the system, we saw these people. We know what they did. We know how they did it. But honestly, I don’t know why,” he added.
Bayode noted that INEC had begun cleaning up the register before publishing its preliminary version, noting that the commission was working within the statutory 90-day period for the exercise.
This revelation emerges as the public raises concerns about questionable photographs and other irregularities in the preliminary register that was uploaded to INEC’s website on October 26.
Screenshots that spread on social media had displayed photographs believed to be AI-generated attached to voter records in certain areas of Edo State.
Additional concerns involved claims of duplicate entries and complaints from some registered voters that their details could not be found in the online register.
