This study investigates the re-mediation of Ìtàn Ìjàpá (Yorùbá tortoise folktales) through AI-generated videos. It explores the relational dynamics among these videos, their creators, digital audiences on TikTok and Facebook, and on-the-ground Yorùbá custodians (comprising three generations). Historically, Ìjàpá has served as a pedagogical and performative tool for negotiating Yorùbá morality and identity (Taiwo, 2019). However, as creators “re-code” these oral traditions into AI-generated videos, the figure of the trickster (Ìjàpá) becomes a site of tension between what is presented through our ancestral orature versus the modern-day algorithmic AI architecture.
This research addresses a critical methodological gap in Digital Humanities on how to evaluate the “cultural accuracy” and “narrative authority” of AI-generated indigenous content. Adopting a relational digital ethnography, the study moves beyond a unidirectional analysis of AI “outputs” only. Instead, it examines the “collaborative authority” (Kashaemei & Sousa, 2026) that emerges when AI-content producers, platform algorithms, and digital audiences interact. The study exposes how the “uncanny” visuality of AI-generated characters triggers performative responses from Yorùbá audiences that either affirm or reject the digital “re-shelling” of their heritage.
The study conducted semi-structured interviews across three different age cohorts of traditional Yorùbá cultural custodians, combined with systematic observation of comments on Facebook and TikTok.