When Sultan Hamid II of Pontianak sketched the original Garuda Pancasila in 1950, he didn’t just wing it. Like a meticulous designer, he went through rigorous brainstorming sessions and endless revisions with founding President Sukarno, diving deep into history, mythology, and precise anatomical proportions to ensure the mythical bird perfectly symbolized the philosophy of a newly independent nation. It was a labor of love and intellectual rigor.
Fast forward 76 years, and this monumental masterpiece has been reduced to a cheap afterthought—not by foreign detractors, but by the very state officials entrusted with preserving national integrity. This wasn’t a blunder by a clueless intern; it came from a prestigious state institution.
On June 1, 2026, during the national commemoration of Pancasila Day, the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) posted a celebratory graphic on social media. The centerpiece? A glaringly mutated, anatomically incorrect Garuda Pancasila.
In Indonesia, you can’t just redesign the national coat of arms on a whim. Law No. 24 of 2009 strictly dictates its anatomy to reflect the date of independence (August 17, 1945): exactly 17 feathers on each wing, 8 on the tail, 19 at the base of the tail, and 45 on the neck.
BRIN’s Garuda, however, apparently went through a rough moult. It featured asymmetrical wings with 16 feathers on the right and 15 on the left, and only 7 tail feathers. The errors didn’t stop there. The sacred symbols on the shield were heavily distorted; the wild bull’s head looked warped, and the banyan tree was so poorly rendered that netizens compared it to a military beret. To top it off, the metallic gold color of the Garuda was replaced with a flat, lifeless bronze.
Tech-savvy netizens quickly smelled AI. Generative AI is notorious for hallucinating repetitive patterns like feathers, especially when the user doesn’t bother with quality control. A reverse image search revealed an even more embarrassing truth: BRIN didn’t even generate it themselves. They bought a cheap, AI-generated asset from Magnific (a platform owned by Freepik) and simply slapped their own text over it.
If a small creative startup did this, it would be a minor embarrassment. But this is BRIN—the vanguard of Indonesian scientific research and intellectual credibility. The irony of a national research agency, staffed by elite academics, failing to do basic fact-checking on the country’s most basic national symbol is staggering.
Sadly, BRIN wasn’t alone. Multiple ministries and local governments posted similarly botched, AI-generated emblems. It points to a deeper, systemic issue within the bureaucracy: a complete lack of quality control, aesthetic value, and attention to detail. It seems public service has become purely performative. Why bother with rigorous research and accuracy when appearance is all that matters? When meticulous work is routinely ignored by policymakers, cutting corners with cheap AI templates becomes the path of least resistance. After all, if they get caught, they can just delete the post, issue a canned apology, and move on.