MEXICO CITY: Veronica Rosas is one of tens of thousands of Mexican mothers searching for children who have disappeared amid a wave of violence fuelled by brutal turf wars between drug cartels.
Now, artificial intelligence (AI) may offer hope to families searching for Mexico’s tens of thousands of missing people.
Two new AI tools are being developed to help find more than 134,000 people who remain missing.
Rosas’ son, Diego, disappeared at the age of 16 in the central town of Ecatepec in September 2015 after leaving home to meet friends.
The state prosecutor’s office said he had been kidnapped by a criminal gang but has not established which group was responsible, why he was taken or whether he is still alive.
“It’s been 11 years and I still don’t know where Diego is. There’s no line of investigation leading us to find out what happened to my son,” Rosas, 52, told AFP at a demonstration in Mexico City, one of many held regularly to demand justice.
Cases such as Diego’s have prompted two universities to develop AI tools in the hope of providing answers.
Regresa (Return), developed by Mexico’s main public university, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), uses anthropometry — the measurement of the human body — to generate images showing how the faces of missing children may have changed over time.
With investigations often dragging on for years, updated likenesses of missing children are a recurring demand from their families.
Countries such as the United States, India and China already use facial recognition and age-progression software to search for kidnapped children.
In Mexico, some prosecutors’ offices use the technology, but most software relies on open-source photo databases that do not adequately reflect typical Mexican features.
Regresa’s developers have taken a different approach.
They created their own image bank using hundreds of photographs and data from 75 Mexican volunteers to produce portraits that better reflect Mexican facial features.
Anthropologist Ana Juarez, one of the project’s founders, said Regresa also uses different technology to estimate how children’s faces change as they grow older.
“Many software programmes only work with facial contours or textures, or add filters that simulate wrinkles. We seek to develop a scientific approach that shows how a person grows in craniofacial terms,” she told AFP, referring to a technique that models changes in the skull and facial structure over time.
Peace boxes and posters
Years of perceived inaction by the authorities have prompted many families in Mexico to conduct their own investigations.
AI is also being used by an anthropologist at the private Ibero-American University to help facilitate these searches.
Emiliano Zolla is mapping missing people by gender, age and the circumstances of their disappearance, hoping the findings will help families narrow their searches.
Among his observations, based on data from cases in the State of Mexico, the country’s most populous state, is that many missing people are young women who disappear while travelling to or from school or work.
Rosas said AI could be a game-changer after learning about Regresa from AFP.
“This initiative is very important because they’re not the little people who were taken back then,” she said.
Rosas has set up a makeshift mailbox bearing a picture of Diego at 16 on Mexico City’s main avenue, where people can leave clues about his whereabouts or birthday greetings for him.
Karla Lechuga formed a search collective after her 19-year-old son, Jeshua Cisneros, disappeared in 2025.
Groups such as hers have installed dozens of “peace boxes” in churches across the country to gather information.
They also display photographs of missing loved ones in public spaces and urge criminal groups to provide anonymous tips.
“We have found some people alive, unfortunately others not,” Lechuga said.