By Pamela Addy
This post is part of Global Voices’ April 2026 Spotlight Series, “Human perspective on AI” This series will provide insight into how AI is being used in the majority of countries around the world, how its use and application is impacting individual communities, what these AI experiments could mean for future generations, and more. You can support this coverage by donating here.
In 2020, shortly after I released “ìfé”, a film about two women falling in love, the head of the National Film and Video Censor Board of Nigeria went to international news saying that My team and I may be arrested.
It was not a vague warning. It was live and public, delivered on CNN. For many of Nigeria’s queer filmmakers, it confirmed something we already knew: telling our stories can have real consequences.
But another consequence is less visible. Beyond censorship and risk, these stories never enter a system that questions what happens when knowledge increasingly transforms how it is produced.
As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more embedded in how data is organized and retrieved, visibility is no longer just for the audience; It’s about information. Stories that are publicly available and widely circulated are more likely to be captured in the datasets that train AI systems. What is hidden or fragmented is much less likely to be included.
In a context like Nigeria, where restrictions on queer storytelling already exist, this creates another layer of exclusion. These stories are not only difficult to tell; They are less likely to be reflected in systems that will shape how queer life is understood in the future.
AI systems do not distinguish between what is absent and what is actively suppressed. They learn from available data and reproduce those patterns at scale. When queer stories are absent or underrepresented, that absence becomes part of the record.
So the question is no longer just about visibility. Whether these stories will be obvious to the technologies that are already shaping cultural memory.
Sometimes, the risk is immediate. In Lagos, the police raided the workplace of Olutimilene Kayode, organizer of Pride in Lagos, after a report was filed. After a while, he lost the place; The property owner decided it was too risky to keep them there. When such places disappear, so will the records they may have produced—records that will contribute to how otherwise queer life is documented and, increasingly, how it is learned by machine systems.
Much of this work does not move through formal distribution channels. It is promoted through private screenings, password-protected links, film festivals and word of mouth. Some films are shown once and never released publicly. Others remain incomplete due to limited funding or are deliberately kept small to avoid attention.
These are essential strategies for survival. But they also imply that work remains largely invisible to the data infrastructure that feeds AI systems.
Distribution itself becomes a discussion. Filmmaker Chinazakop Chukwu took a strategic approach with his film “Ti E Nbo“Beginning with international festivals. After screening at the African International Film Festival in 2023, it was rejected by other Nigerian festivals. It later reached audiences in Ghana through a streaming partnership and gained international recognition. It was then that Nigerian festivals began to show interest.
His experience reflects a broader pattern: local gatekeepers often respond to international legitimacy before offering visibility at home. For filmmakers whose work doesn’t travel globally, however important those stories are, the path narrows.
Sometimes, the most effective intervention is calm. The film “ìfé” portrays love between two Nigerian women in a simple, everyday way – without surprises or explanations. It did not argue for acceptance; It simply exists. Audiences responded with a kind of recognition rarely seen in local media. The film gained traction online and in the press, providing a rare moment where queer love was presented as part of everyday life.
with my work Equality HubWe tried to make it through the EhTv network, a streaming platform for queer African stories outside of state control. It was short-lived due to funding constraints, but it highlighted both the urgency and difficulty. Creating independent platforms for these narratives. We are now rebuilding it as an archive and discovery platform.
Such work is important because AI systems are trained on large amounts of publicly available, digitized content. In theory, this creates a comprehensive representation of the world. In reality, it reflects the existing disparities in what is seen and preserved.
For queer storytellers in Nigeria, many narratives do not reach that level of visibility. These exist in private archives, limited screening or in fragmented form. What enters the public domain is often a fraction of what exists.
When AI systems are trained on incomplete records, they don’t just reflect those gaps—they reinforce them. A future user inquiring about queer life in Nigeria may encounter a version of reality that is partial or missing the original perspective, not because these stories do not exist, but because they have never been widely captured. Thus, existing forms of alignment are carried forward into the new system. What is missing from the dataset becomes missing from the description.
Storytelling, then, takes on another level of importance. In Nigeria, it has long been a means of preventing social erasure. In the context of AI, it also becomes a way to ensure that these stories are documented and accessible in ways that can shape future knowledge.
Seen this way, queer storytelling isn’t just a creative act—it’s also infrastructural. Each story contributes to what is known, by whom and, increasingly, by what systems. The challenge is not only to tell these stories, but to ensure they are preserved and made visible in ways that resist social and algorithmic erasure.
AI won’t know the difference between silence and suppression. It will only learn from what is available.
And in a world where so much is filtered, what goes unseen today risks being remembered tomorrow. So the question is not whether these stories are important.
It is whether they will be visible enough to shape what the future remembers.
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This post was Previously published at globalvoices.org under a Creative Commons License.
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