The South African Reserve Bank confirmed to MyBroadband that Microsoft Copilot was used to design elements of the new commemorative R2 coin.
The South African Reserve Bank confirmed that elements of the composition of its new R2 commemorative coin were AI-enhanced using Microsoft Copilot.
Two new R2 coins were launched by the SARB on Monday, honouring Charlotte Maxeke, the first black woman in South Africa to graduate with a university degree.
The new coins also commemorated the 1956 Women’s March, which is celebrated in South Africa as Women’s Day on 9 August. The march opposed amendments to the Urban Areas Act.
This was also the moment when the famous South African protest phrase, “You strike a woman, you strike a rock,” was born.
At the launch of the new commemorative coins, Reserve Bank Governor Lesetja Kganyago paid tribute to the legacy of South African women.
“This is a circulation coin; it’s an ordinary coin. The only difference is that it carries the image of this great woman,” Kganyago said.
“Remember, we are launching two coins: one is about this great woman, Charlotte Maxeke’s graduation, and the other is celebrating the women who gathered just across the road from here.”
The two coins were already declared legal tender on 16 June 2026. Like other coins, they do not have a higher value. Instead, they are created to celebrate important milestones, events, and legacies.
While one coin commemorates the 125th anniversary of Charlotte Maxeke’s graduation, the other depicts four women marching with placards in front of the Union Buildings.
The Maxeke coin features text stating that she graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree 125 years ago, in 1901, while the obverse features the South African Coat of Arms.
However, the reverse face of the R2 Women’s March coin featured an image that appeared to have been generated by an artificial intelligence (AI) tool.
Specifically, the shading and photographic style of the image provided by the SARB stood out from the other R2 coin designs.
Official design depicting commemorative R2 coin containing elements generated by OpenAI’s DALL-E 3, via Microsoft Copilot, on the reverse face
MyBroadband reached out to the SARB for confirmation on whether AI was used in any way to create the image that would appear on the new R2 coin.
The Reserve Bank said that AI tools played a role in the design’s creation, alongside work by SA Mint Senior Artist Lilian Guerra.
“The composition, layout, and typography of the R2 commemorative circulation coin, which honours the women who participated in the historic 1956 Women’s March, were designed by Guerra,” it said.
“The design combines photographic references with AI-assisted elements.”
According to her LinkedIn, Guerra has been an artist at the country’s producer of physical currency since 1999. She has worked on and helped design numerous special coins throughout the years.
“Every coin I have designed has created a window into South Africa’s extraordinary history, a way to discover the stories of the people who live here and the places they occupy,” Guerra said.
“I am intrigued by the development of digital software and the extraordinary things one can create in a digital medium, but I still love hand-drawn illustrations and bas-relief models created in clay and plaster.”
The SARB said that Microsoft Copilot was used to adapt the visual style of Guerra’s photographs and drawings to align with the “broader artistic treatment of the coin.”
“As well as to generate the foreground figures depicting the marchers,” it said. This particular instance is the clearest use of AI on the coin’s design.
Microsoft Copilot’s primary image generation tool, which turns text prompts into images, is called Designer and was formerly known as Bing Image Creator.
It primarily uses OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 image-generation engine, which translates detailed natural-language prompts into visual styles and compositions.
Microsoft applies its own safety filters, watermarking protocols and post-processing to the output of the DALL-E 3 generator on Copilot, which is often why certain AI-generated images appear similar.
