PETALING JAYA: A string of slip-ups in images of the Jalur Gemilang involving a national paper, global expo and ministry report has shone a spotlight on the risks of unchecked AI use.
Universiti Malaysia Kelantan Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Big Data (Aibig) director Dr Muhammad Akmal Remli said such errors point to flaws in how global AI models are trained and deployed, especially when it comes to culturally specific content.
“Inaccuracies like a wrongly rendered Jalur Gemilang happen because the AI model may not have had sufficient exposure to correct representations of Malaysian symbols during training,” he said, adding that while some AI tools perform impressively when generating generic content, they often falter with highly specific cultural or national elements such as flags.
“AI can generate a wide range of content such as text, voice, images and videos based on prompts. But what many do not realise is when AI is asked to create an image of a classroom with a Malaysian flag, the outcome depends on how the AI interprets those prompts through numerical tokens and what it has learnt from its training data.”
Muhammad Akmal said this reflects a broader issue – many generative AI models are built and trained within global frameworks that often under-represent countries like Malaysia.
“Global AI models frequently lack sufficient regional and cultural training data. There is an opportunity here for Malaysia to develop its own AI systems.”
He said with government backing, local startups and tech companies could step up and train models using Malaysian data involving cultural symbols, traditions and languages.
Muhammad Akmal also said using AI in government and media settings, especially for public content, requires greater caution.
“Incidents like these are a wake-up call. We must use AI responsibly, not just chase trends.”
