When Guadalupe González Rodríguez saw a Facebook job By offering people AI-generated animated images of their deceased loved ones, she was immediately interested. “I wanted to give my husband a video of his mother, as a gift,” said González Rodríguez, who loved using AI to enhance photos and videos on social media. Rest of the world.
She sent two photos, one of her husband and one of her mother-in-law, to a WhatsApp number. Within minutes, she received a five-second animated image of the two of them: her husband blinking. almost naturally and his mother smiling and writhing awkwardly for a second.
Cerveza Victoria, a popular beer brand in Mexico, launched the marketing campaign ahead of Day of the Dead celebrations in November. Several other companies launched similar campaigns last month. Experts in AI regulation and cybersecurity said Rest of the world They fear that images of deceased people could be misused and lead to identity theft. Last year, one in five people in Mexico were victims of cybercrime, including identity theft and scams, according to a study. study by cybersecurity company Norton.
“The problem is that Mexican data protection law does not include this type of practice or management of personal data,” said Luis Osorio, head of the AI practice at Inetum, an IT consulting firm. Rest of the world. There is no legal clarity about what use should be given to photos of deceased people, making them more vulnerable to deepfakes or identity theft after they die, he said.
J. García López, a Mexican funeral home that launched its Día de Muertos campaign in October, has received more than 15,000 requests to create AI-generated videos of deceased people, said its CEO Óscar Padilla. Rest of the world. The funeral home ran this service as part of a marketing campaign campaign called “You’re Still Here.”
“(It was) a way to touch a sensitive fiber of families, because the memories of those who have left us are usually a smile, a hug, a burst of laughter,” Padilla said.
The funeral home’s technical team developed the AI software to animate the images. “We had to do a lot of testing to get what we were looking for: that the person’s natural facial expression wouldn’t change or be distorted,” Padilla said.
Daniela Rojas, senior program manager at the Eon Institute, a Mexican think tank focused on AI, expressed concerns about how these companies store people’s images and biometric data. “I would be concerned about the quality of their cybersecurity standards so that this type of information is not leaked to malicious individuals,” she said. Rest of the world.
According to a 2024 study According to consulting firm KPMG, cybersecurity is the most urgent and priority threat facing businesses in Mexico and Central America due to recent developments in AI, especially AI generative.
“We don’t store the photos because we would have to pay for those (gigabytes) of storage,” Padilla said, adding that files are automatically deleted after being sent to users.
In its terms and conditions, Cerveza Victoria states that it is not responsible for any risks inherent in the use of AI-generated images. The company did not respond to a list of questions from Rest of the world.
Using AI to resurrect the dead has raised ethical questions elsewhere. In 2020, Jang Ji-sung, a mother of four in South Korea, was practically united with an AI-generated avatar of her deceased 7-year-old daughter. Ji-sung had said it helped her say goodbye to her child, but “many psychologists came forward and said it could, in some cases, prolong the grieving process,” Rojas said. The debate has yet to take root in Mexico, where the practice of digital resurrections has exploded in popularity this year.
The use of AI in this year’s Day of the Dead marketing campaigns hasn’t been without its problems. Some of the participants in the campaigns of J. García López and Cerveza Victoria complained on social networks that the AI animation tool was not working properly.
Angélica Rivera Gabino, an accountant from the State of Mexico, posted a photo of a family member on J. García López’s website. “I never received the promised video because an error kept popping up,” she said. Rest of the world. She doesn’t know what happened to the photo she uploaded, if anything.
Claudia Del Pozo, CEO of the Eon Institute, worries about the long-term effects of normalizing the use of AI to “animate” the dead.
“When you set up the (Day of the Dead) altar, you know they are dead. You’re trying to reconnect with their memory and celebrate their life,” Del Pozo said. Rest of the world. Resurrecting people with AI, she says, “is almost ignoring the fact that they are dead.”
