Washington DC - Former President Barack Obama has attracted attention with a controversial statement: he is certain that aliens exist!

In the podcast No Lie, hosted by YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen, the 64-year-old admitted that he does believe in extraterrestrials.

"They're real, but I haven't seen them," he said.

Obama went on to add that, contrary to popular conspiracy theories, they are "not being held" in Area 51.

"There's no underground facility. Unless, there's this enormous conspiracy, and they hid it from the president of the United States," the Democratic politician said.

His statements quickly went viral, and on Saturday, he took to his social media to "clarify" his take in the face of some online uproar.

"Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there's life out there," he said via Instagram. "But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we've been visited by aliens is low."

During his presidency from 2009 to 2017, he emphasized that he had seen no evidence that extraterrestrial beings had "made contact with us."

"Really!" Obama added.