Barack Obama has backtracked on his previous statement on aliens' existence. In an interview published on Saturday, the former U.S President said that aliens are "real" but he hasn't seen them.When Brian Taylor Cohen asked if aliens are real, Obama responded, saying,"They're real but I haven't seen them. They're not being kept at Area 51. There's no underground facility unless there's this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States."After the former President's comments made headlines, he took to Instagram on Sunday evening to release a statement and clarify his opinions on extraterrestrial life,"I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed ground, but since it's gotten attention let me clarify. Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there's life out there. But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we've been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really."Area 51 is a highly classified United States Air Force (USAF) base located at Groom Lake in the Nevada desert. There is a long-running conspiracy theory that the US government is hiding aliens at Area 51.What has Barack Obama said about the existence of extraterrestrial species previously?During an appearance on The Late Late Show with James Corden in 2021, former U.S President claimed that when he first came into office, he questioned the existence of alien species,"The truth is, that when I came into office, I asked, 'Is there the lab somewhere where we're keeping the alien specimens and spaceship?"In the same year, Barack Obama appeared on The Ezra Klein Show podcast, the president claimed that if aliens existed, it would impact the political and social climate of the earth,"There would be immediate arguments about, like, well, we need to spend a lot more money on weapons systems to defend oursleves. Other religious would pop up. And who knows what kind of arguments we get into."The U.S government refused to confirm the existence of Area 51 before 2013. In 2013, the CIA confirmed that the space was used as an aerial testing ground for US government projects. The space is highly classified, and authorized access is prohibited. As per reports, armed guards are constantly patrolling the perimeter of the property. Former President Barack Obama and the U.S government have denied conspiracy theories that the space is being used to house aliens.