Clip showing human-like creature entangled in fishing nets is AI-generated
- Published on October 23, 2025 at 15:27
- 3 min read
- By Tolera FIKRU GEMTA, AFP Ethiopia
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A video circulating widely on Facebook in Ethiopia claims to show an alien creature that was captured in fishing nets after killing “many” people at sea. Other posts described the creature as a mermaid. However, these claims are false: the video was created using an artificial intelligence tool.
A Facebook post published in Ethiopia on October 17, 2025, contains text in Afaan Oromoo that translates to: “Alien creature that killed many people in the sea.”
A video in the post, shared more than 3,400 times, shows fishermen on a wooden boat at sea with a creature bearing human-like features captured in a fishing net. As it squeals and struggles to escape, the men speak to each other in English.
“Oh, she is twisting… easy, no, easy,” says one of the men.
“Christ, look at her face,” another man appears to say.
“Settle… settle… we are not here to hurt you… pull it in… easy girl, easy… just breathe, all right… breathe,” he adds.
Comments shared under the video suggest that numerous viewers believe the footage is genuine.
“This is Satan that feeds on human blood. God’s power has failed her, that is why she was captured!” reads one of many comments in Afaan Oromoo.
“I hope a thorough investigation will be conducted on this creature that killed many people,” adds another user.
The claim is also circulating on Facebook (like here and here) with English captions suggesting the creature is a mermaid caught in various locations, such as Australia and India.
Misinformation related to mysterious sea animals, including mermaids, is common on social media (here and here).
However, the video does not show a mermaid or a dangerous sea creature.
AI-generated clip
AFP Fact Check used InVID-WeVerify to conduct reverse image searches on keyframes from the video.
Among the hundreds of results was a video shared on YouTube on October 13, 2025, four days before the claim started circulating on Facebook in Ethiopia (archived here).
The caption reads "fishermen catches (sic)" and includes the hashtags “#aivideo” and “#ai”, an indication that the footage was generated by an AI tool.
The same video was also found here and here on YouTube. One of the captions reads: “Fishermen Catch A ‘REAL MERMAID’ Trapped in Fishing Net! (Shocking Footage)" (archived here and here).
AFP Fact Check ran the clip through the deepfake detector in the InVID-WeVerify verification toolkit.
The results revealed a 95 percent probability that the clip was created using AI.
We also traced the video to a public group on Facebook where it was shared by a page called “The AI Experiment” — the same name as a TikTok account whose watermark appears in the clip (archived here and here).
The video is no longer available on the TikTok account, which has 830,000 followers, and may have been taken down.
According to the National Ocean Service, the US agency that provides data on coastal resources and oceans, there is no evidence that mermaids are real (archived here).
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