U.S. delegation uses AI slop map of Africa at AIDS conference

A U.S. State Department map of Africa mislabeled every country it depicted during a presentation at the AIDS 2026 conference in Rio de Janeiro. The slide was so egregiously wrong that multiple attendees whipped out their phones to get a shot of it; Emily Bass, a writer and AIDS expert, wrote about it at length.

"The US government's failure to catch this error before displaying the slide at the top international AIDS conference in the world, in a session that featured the Director General of Nigeria as an invited guest, is not only disrespectful to African collaborators, it's also a significant tell." wrote Bass.

Senior officials from several African governments were reportedly among those present. The map shows six countries receiving U.S. health funding and none of them are correctly named or placed. Nigeria has migrated north to become landlocked in the Sahara. Mozambique has roughly replaced Ethiopia. The Ivory Coast was placed in southern Africa, far from any coast, its name an ignored clue. Uganda and Malawi are not so far off, but drawn with wrong borders. Cameroon was named but assigned no territory at all. While one country on the Gulf of Guinea—a hypothetical union of Ghana, Benin and Togo?—went unnamed. Perhaps that is Cameroon now. The speaker was Jeff Graham, the U.S. health envoy who oversees PEPFAR.

"Whoever ⁠created and approved this slide did not know where countries in Africa are and did not care to check their work," wrote Matt Petit. Reuters reviewed video of the presentation and concluded that the map was AI slop.

"A Reuters analysis found the image of the map included in the presentation contained an artificial intelligence watermark that signals it was made with OpenAI tools. The company said it was investigating the report." The State Department said it took "full responsibility" and blamed a staffer who changed the slide deck shortly before the event.

This sort of thing is normal in the Trump administration. Last year, the White House's "Make America Healthy Again" report cited studies that did not exist, with fabricated references and other hallmarks of AI slop.

The US State Department Redraws the Map of Africa at the AIDS2026 Conference [Emily Bass]