Ethiopia has experienced brutal internal conflicts in recent years, as well as rivalries with neighbouring Somalia over access to the sea. Against this backdrop, a Facebook post claims to show footage of dozens of ballistic missiles being paraded by the Ethiopian army. However, this is false: the footage was generated using artificial intelligence.
The video in the post contains a text overlay in English that reads “Ethiopian Army”.
Screenshot of the false post, taken on February 4, 2025
The five-second clip shows what looks like long, uniform lines of intercontinental ballistic missiles being driven on a public road.
A list of hashtags included in the post alludes to the Ethiopian military.
Ethiopian troops are fighting armed rebels in Oromia and Amhara, the country’s most populous regions. In Oromia, the army has been fighting the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) since 2018, while in Amhara, it has been clashing with Fano forces since 2023 (archived here and here).
Fano was a former ally of the army during the Tigray conflict that ended in November 2022 but then rebelled in April 2023 after the government decided to disarm all local militia.
Ethiopia has demonstrated its modern military capabilities on several occasions, including in August 2022 when it showed off Turkish- and Chinese-made combat drones during a military graduation ceremony.
But, closer inspection reveals the footage of Ethiopia’s purported missile arsenal was artificially created (archived here).
AI-generated content
An initial clue that the footage was AI-generated is evident in the faces of the people driving the first missile carrier — or rather, their lack of faces. Closer inspection reveals the faces do not have any human features.
Screenshot from the false post showing the drivers of the first carrier lacking human features (circled), taken on February 5, 2025
AFP Fact Check ran the footage through an AI content detector from Hive Moderation, which concluded the video was likely AI-generated with a 97 percent probability (archived here).
Screenshot from the Hive Moderation results, taken on February 5, 2025
AFP Fact Check also used the video verification tool InVID-WeVerify to conduct reverse image searches on keyframes from the video.
The results led to the same footage published on TikTok by a user called “vietnamese__World Peace” on December 8, 2023 (archived here).
The original video has a caption that explains the clip is an “AI video”. The footage also has a watermark in the top left that says “AI”, indicating the content was created using generative software.
Screenshots of the AI-generated original footage with the watermark circled (left) and the false post (right), taken on February 4, 2025
In the false post, the “AI” watermark has been replaced with images of the Ethiopian flag to conceal the fact that the footage was made with an AI program.
