We Asked Artificial Intelligence To Predict Nigeria’s Future As Citizens Elect New Leaders.
Here’s The Result
A Special Voters’ Awareness Campaign By Neusroom With Creative Support From X3M Ideas
22 February 2023
The future looks bleak if young Nigerians don’t get it right as they head to the polls on February 25 and March 11, 2023, to elect new leaders.
Disturbing images of what the near future of Nigeria may look like if citizens don’t make the right electoral choices have been depicted by an artificial intelligence (AI) image generator.
One of the images features a dilapidated Nigerian local street road in 2050. Another shows a Nigerian local street at night in 2070 covered in darkness due to a power outage. The disturbing images are not desirable for the kind of country many young Nigerians would want the country to look like in the future.
Neusroom, on Wednesday, February 22, 2023, unveiled the results of the predictions as part of a voters’ awareness and sensitisation campaign targeting young people whose future would be most affected by the outcome of the 2023 elections.
The campaign, with the creative support of X3M Ideas, one of Africa’s leading full-service marketing communications agencies, aims to galvanise national awareness to increase the number of young voters in the upcoming general elections.
“As a socially conscious media platform, Neusroom has partnered with X3M Ideas on this voter education and awareness campaign to hopefully inspire Nigeria’s young population to civic action,” Michael Orodare, Editorial Lead at Neusroom said. “It is not enough to have the right to vote as a registered voter, what is more important is to utilise the right to bring reform into government by choosing leaders who will deliver a working future for all.”
Mid Journey, an image-generating Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform was deployed to paint a picture of what Nigeria would look like in the near future. The results returned by the platform were disturbing and undesirable for the kind of country many young Nigerians would want the country to look like in the future.
Images generated by the AI platform will be used for awareness messages across online platforms and on billboards in different parts of Lagos, Nigeria.
“These results were from the AI platform’s assessment of our past and present,” Mike Miller, Executive Creative Director, X3M Ideas said. “We told Mid Journey (An image-generating AI platform) to show us what Nigeria would look like in the nearest future and the results we got were not desirable of the kind of country we want Nigeria to be in the future.”
In a country where the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) says 63% (133 million) residents are multidimensionally poor and 33.3% (23.18 million people) are jobless, while 73% of Nigerians were looking to emigrate with their families in 2021, according to the Africa Polling Institute (API), the awareness campaign is targeted at young electorates (18-34) who make up 39.65% (37 million) of the 93.4 million registered voters and have been victims of Nigeria’s rising unemployment and police brutality.
Data from Nigeria’s previous elections since the country’s return to democracy in 1999 and the recent data from INEC have shown that young voters have the electoral power to decide where the pendulum swings in any election if they utilise their rights to elect the right candidates into elective offices from the presidency to the governorship and legislative positions.
The highest votes ever polled by a presidential candidate since 1999 was in 2007 by the late Umaru Yar’Adua who polled 24.6 million of the 35.4 million votes cast. With 37 million young voters, Nigerians have the power to make a choice that will set the country on the path of greatness in the February 25 and March 11, 2023 elections.
Neusroom and X3M Ideas hope that young Nigerians can prove the AI results wrong by going out to vote for leaders that will transform the country and create the desired future.
This is wild!