Does a video show a large cruise ship abandoned in the desert by Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister of Ethiopia? No, that's not true: No legitimate news organization has reported it, though a massive engineering feat such as this undertaken by a political leader would be newsworthy to local, national and world newsrooms. The video is AI-generated. Two clips showing the windows and portholes of the ship's exterior reveal an unequal number of decks in each scene. An interior clip showing the abandoned galley features lettering on the menu board that is not in any actual alphabet, and only mimics actual text, a common flaw with AI renderings.
The AI-generated video appeared in a post (archived here) published on X by @InaOlad on Dec. 22, 2025. It is captioned:
Someone please notify Abiy Ahmed to come collect his 5-star Cruiser. Leaving that thing in the desert 🏜️ is disrespectful... to the desert itself.
The sand didn't sign up for this level of embarrassment and that Red Sea dream didn't drown... it got stranded in the middle of nowhere (lost direction). #FreeTheDesert #redsea #HighEndLowMoment #Africa #Somalia #Eritrea #Assab #EastAfrica
This is a screenshot of the video:
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot from x.com/InaOlad/status/2003171671306371321.)
This post appears to be a satirical jab at the Prime Minister of Ethiopia who is hoping to gain access to the Red Sea. A Dec. 13, 2025 article (archived here) on abcnews.go.com summarized:
Ethiopia said it wants to peacefully gain Red Sea access through Eritrea, which it relied on heavily for trade before the secession. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said in September it was a "mistake" to lose access to the sea when Eritrea gained independence in 1993 by seceding from Ethiopia to form a separate nation. Abiy's rhetoric has been seen as provocative by Eritrea.
Lead Stories searched the Google News index of thousands of news sites, using the search terms "Abiy Ahmed", "5-star Cruiser" and desert, finding zero stories matching them.
This video does not show a real scene. As the video begins, between the 00:00:07 and 00:00:12 mark, two views of the ship's exterior show many small inconsistencies, such as the number and sizes of the lifeboats. A glaring difference (compared below) between the first and second clip is the number of decks with large picture windows immediately below the lifeboats. In the first clip there is only one, and in the second clip there is a second tier of large picture windows (red markup below right) which is not present in the first clip.
(Image Source: Lead Stories composite image with screenshots from x.com/InaOlad/status/2003171671306371321.)
At 00:00:50 in the video there is a scene showing a cafeteria-style galley in the ship. The menu boards (pictured below) over the serving stations do not have real words, just AI-generated imitation text.
(Image Source: Lead Stories detail screenshot from x.com/InaOlad/status/2003171671306371321.)
