DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — On the Mercator projection, one of the world’s most popular maps, Greenland and Africa appear to be about the same size. But on the Equal Earth projection showing continents in their true proportions, 14 Greenlands would easily fit inside the African continent.
Criticism that the Mercator projection does not accurately reflect Africa's real size is not new.
However, a recent campaign by African advocacy groups is gaining momentum online as it urges organizations and schools to adopt the Equal Earth projection, which they say more accurately displays the size of the continent of more than 1.4 billion people.
The African Union, the continent's diplomatic organization with 55 member countries, endorsed the campaign last week in what advocates call a major milestone.
Here is what to know about the effort to show Africa's real size to the world.
The Mercator map was created in the 16th century by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator. Designed to help European navigators at sea, the map distorted landmasses by enlarging regions near the poles such as North America and Greenland while shrinking Africa and South America.
The 2018 Equal Earth projection is a modern map that follows the Earth’s curvature and shows continents in their true proportions, unlike the distorted Mercator map.
The Mercator projection is still common in classrooms and tech platforms. Google Maps dropped the widely used projection for a 3D globe when viewed on a desktop browser in 2018, but users can switch back to the old map. The mobile app still defaults to the Mercator projection.
Two African advocacy groups, Africa No Filter and Speak Up Africa, launched a campaign in April to push schools, followed by international organizations and media outlets, to use the Equal Earth projection, which it says more accurately reflects the true size of Africa.
“Correcting the map is not only an African issue. It is a matter of truth and accuracy that concerns the entire world. When whole generations, in Africa and elsewhere, learn from a distorted map, they develop a biased view of Africa’s role in the world," said Fara Ndiaye, co-founder and deputy executive director of Speak Up Africa.
For non-Africans, a shrunken representation of Africa minimizes its demographic, economic and strategic significance, Ndiaye added.
The African Union endorsed the campaign on Aug. 14, the largest body to sign on to the campaign so far, marking a significant milestone for the “Correct The Map” campaign.
Mark Monmonier, a Syracuse University professor of geography, said the Mercator projection is obsolete and geographers have long advised people to not use it as a world map.
“It was a useful navigation tool in the 16th century, because it has straight lines, giving navigators a line of constant direction to sail along," Monmonier said. “But outside of that very narrow navigation application, there is no point in using it."
While maps following the curvature of the earth, like the Equal Earth projection, offer a more accurate scale of the true sizes of the continents, he nonetheless warned that bar graphs remain the best way to compare the sizes of different continents.
“When you put irregularly shaped areas on a flat paper, people are going to have a hard time accurately comparing the size of landmasses," Monmonier said.
This story has been corrected to show that the name of the campaign is “Correct The Map,” not “Change the Map.”
FILE - Soldiers look at a world map as they wait to board a flight in Manas, Kyrgyzstan, on the way home after completing a deployment in Afghanistan, Thursday, Aug. 11, 2011. (AP Photo/David Goldman, file)
LONDON (AP) — Laws that will make it illegal to create online sexual images of someone without their consent are coming into force soon in the U.K., officials said Thursday, following a global backlash over the use of Elon Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot Grok to make sexualized deepfakes of women and children.
Musk's company, xAI, announced late Wednesday that it has introduced measures to prevent Grok from allowing the editing of photos of real people to portray them in revealing clothing in places where that is illegal.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer welcomed the move, and said X must “immediately” ensure full compliance with U.K. law. He stressed that his government will remain vigilant on any transgressions by Grok and its users.
“Free speech is not the freedom to violate consent," Starmer said Thursday. “I am glad that action has now been taken. But we’re not going to let this go. We will continue because this is a values argument.”
The chatbot, developed by Musk's company xAI and freely accessed through his social media platform X, has faced global scrutiny after it emerged that it was used in recent weeks to generate thousands of images that “undress” people without their consent. The digitally-altered pictures included nude images as well as depictions of women and children in bikinis or in sexually explicit poses.
Critics have said laws regulating generative AI tools are long overdue, and that the U.K. legal changes should have been brought into force much sooner.
A look at the problem and how the U.K. aims to tackle it:
Britain's media regulator has launched an investigation into whether X has breached U.K. laws over the Grok-generated images of children being sexualized or people being undressed. The watchdog, Ofcom, said such images — and similar productions made by other AI models — may amount to pornography or child sexual abuse material.
The problem stemmed from the launch last year of Grok Imagine, an AI image generator that allows users to create videos and pictures by typing in text prompts. It includes a so-called “spicy mode” that can generate adult content.
Technology Secretary Liz Kendall cited a report from the internet Watch Foundation saying the deepfake images included sexualization of 11-year-olds and women subjected to physical abuse.
“The content which has circulated on X is vile. It is not just an affront to decent society, it is illegal,” she said.
Authorities said they are making legal changes to criminalize those who use or supply “nudification” tools.
First, the government says it is fast-tracking provisions in the Data (Use and Access) Act making it a criminal offense to create or request deepfake images. The act was passed by Parliament last year, but had not yet been brought into force.
The legislation is set to come into effect on Feb. 6
“Let this be a clear message to every cowardly perpetrator hiding behind a screen: you will be stopped and when you are, make no mistake that you will face the full force of the law,” Justice Secretary David Lammy said
Separately, the government said it is also criminalizing “nudification” apps as part of the Crime and Policing Bill, which is currently going through Parliament.
The new criminal offense will make it illegal for companies to supply tools designed to create non-consensual intimate images. Kendall said this would “target the problem at its source.”
The investigation by Ofcom is ongoing. Kendall said X could face a fine of up to 10% of its qualifying global revenue depending on the investigation’s outcome and a possible court order blocking access to the site.
Starmer has faced calls for his government to stop using X. Downing Street said this week it was keeping its presence on the platform “under review."
Musk insisted Grok complied with the law. “When asked to generate images, it will refuse to produce anything illegal, as the operating principle for Grok is to obey the laws of any given country or state,” he posted on X. “There may be times when adversarial hacking of Grok prompts does something unexpected. If that happens, we fix the bug immediately.”
FILE - Workers install lighting on an "X" sign atop the company headquarters, formerly known as Twitter, in downtown San Francisco, July 28, 2023. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)
