ChatGPT Gets Africa (Somehow)
As Tour Business Coaching Program participants, we were encouraged to subscribe to ChatGPT 4. Visual art generation is one of its advances, and it has proved hilarious to explore what it knows about Africa.
When asked to draw a map of the Gorilla Highlands region, it emphasised Lake Bunyonyi, and that was intriguing. Requested to do it again and again (it starts from scratch each time), the lake always appeared on the map. The only explanation we could come up with: since our Ugandan base is on Bunyonyi and there’s a lot about it in our media, the artificial brain made the connection?
The instruction to draw a local corporate client enjoying a big meal resulted in something utterly unrealistic.
A local man with money would never ever opt for so little meat and such a petite plate! But the machine responded perfectly after being corrected a couple of times …
After we requested a Rwandan woman hiking, something pretty neat was generated quickly.
However, being told to make the image less cartoonish, ChatGPT went wild and commented: “I’ve aimed for a more realistic portrayal.”
Our robot artist was also tasked to display “the city of Bukavu with 3 American clients feeling totally safe”. Presenting us with the image below, it boasted that it captured “the unique architecture and natural surroundings”. The latter is OK but the former is a painful miss — ChatGPT does not know what buildings in Congo look like.
Proving good work done by Uganda’s marketeers, the machine knows which among the world’s many Queen Elizabeth National Parks we mean … It does believe zebras and even tigers belong, on the other hand.
Provoked to add rhinos, it obliges and also hallucinates giraffes — some of them flying. But all in all: Biblical!
In the ultimate test, Artificial Intelligence finally proved itself once and for all! Directed to draw an airplane full of crying babies but no parents, it defaulted to depicting only the white race. It was fascinating that one of the little ones was in the overhead compartment.
Told to make the babies African, it went out of its way — seemingly knowing how our transport works, it put many more passengers up there in the carry-on bins.
Disclaimer: This text was not written or corrected by software; final touches by our consultant from California who is quite close to human.
