Turning to artificial intelligence to keep Mexico’s more than 125,000 missing people from being forgotten, a collective in the state of Jalisco has been crafting “living” videos of the missing that talk to the public.
In the state with the highest number of missing persons, the Luz de Esperanza Collective creates Fichas Vivas de Búsqueda, or Living Search Cards — short AI-generated videos that animate photos and recreate the voices of the disappeared for social media.
El Colectivo Luz de Esperanza pegó cinco mil cédulas de personas desaparecidas enfrente del Palacio de Gobierno de Jalisco#ReporteZMG pic.twitter.com/wlovR3KfR8
— TráficoZMGuadalajara (@Trafico_ZMG) May 12, 2024
The clips circulate online, seeking to cut through the noise and force viewers to confront a national human rights crisis.
Using image, facial animation and speech synthesis tools, families script what their relatives would say and work with technologists to produce videos that resemble digital search posters — with a “photo” of the missing person actually “speaking.”
In one 110-second video, the photo of the missing person declares, “I am Carlos Maximiliano Romera Meza. I was 18 years old when I disappeared, and I want to tell you my story.”
In another, an image of Yordi Alejandro Cárdenas Flores says he was 21 when four armed men in a van, allegedly linked to the state prosecutor, intercepted him in San Pedro Tlaquepaque in 2022.
The project has been going since 2023, but a recent study published in Inter Disciplina, a journal of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), put fresh attention on the videos in showing how AI has become a tool for searching mothers.
The study noted that “live search cards” not only communicate that someone is missing, but also reactivate social bonds for the missing person’s loved ones and offer a “narrative of hope.”
Disappearances in Mexico continue to rise despite shifting security strategies.
The National Registry of Missing and Disappeared Persons lists 128,059 people as missing as of March 2025. More than 90% of cases have been recorded since 2006, and over 60,000 since 2019, with young men and teenage girls the most affected.
Jalisco alone has more than 15,300 disappeared, nearly 7,000 of them men ages 15 to 34.
As the Luz de Esperanza Collective points out on its website, “Although official government figures reflect one reality, organizations and communities estimate that they could be up to four times higher.”
It also adds that “most disappearances go unreported due to fear, threats, or lack of knowledge of the process.”
The Living Search Cards project hasn’t been easy. For starters, the families, many of them mothers with little formal tech training, need to learn AI tools or secure outside help.
Moreover, the collective and others have reported repercussions of becoming more visible, such as increased surveillance by local authorities, whom they say monitor their organizing and sometimes try to intimidate or disrupt them.
They also say they are more prone to digital extortion — when scammers scour posts for names, photos and case details and then demand money in exchange for “release” or “proof” that a loved one is alive.
With reports from Wired, N+, El Diario NTR, and Zona Docs
