Rebuilding faces and identifying tattoos, AI joins the search for the missing in Mexico

Source Domain: www.cnn.com

In 2021, Héctor Daniel Flores Hernández was reported missing. Two years later, his father, Héctor Flores, saw his son’s image speak again. In a video generated through artificial intelligence technology, which digitally animated a still image and gave it a synthesized voice, the figure of Héctor Daniel Flores Hernández narrated the story of his disappearance — when he was 19 years old from his home in Guadalajara — and demanded that the authorities find him alive. Since then, his father has made the search for a way of life.

“I couldn’t finish watching it the first time,” Héctor Flores said in an interview when the video was first produced. “It took me a while to process it. Seeing them with the last photo you have, saying what you know from investigations, is heartbreaking.”

The video was part of an initiative launched in 2023 by the collectives Luz de Esperanza and Alas de Libertad — groups of relatives of missing persons who organize to carry out searches, raise awareness of cases and demand justice — in the western state of Jalisco, to give a voice to the missing-persons notices about their relatives. Flores, a co-founder of Luz de Esperanza, said that the initiative continues and that “it is a perfect tool not only for the search but also to raise awareness and try to create empathy.”

Disappearances are all too common in Mexico, a country that has recorded more than 132,000 missing people since the National Registry of Disappeared and Unlocated Persons of the Secretariat of the Interior began keeping track in 1964. Human Rights Watch reports that the government has not taken sufficient measures to prevent disappearances or punish those responsible.

President Claudia Sheinbaum has acknowledged that most disappearances are linked to organized crime, and Amnesty International notes that the problem can be…

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