Use of AI on images of the dead is unregulated in the country, leaving cybersecurity experts worried about the potential for deepfakes and identity theft.

J. García López, a funeral home in Mexico that launched its Día de Muertos campaign in October, received over 15,000 requests to create AI-generated videos of deceased persons. Daniela Rojas, senior program officer at Eon Institute, an AI-focused Mexican think tank, expressed concerns about how such companies store people’s images and biometrics.

Using AI to resurrect the dead has raised ethical questions elsewhere. In 2020, Jang Ji-sung, a mother of four in South Korea, was virtually reunited with an AI-generated avatar of her dead 7-year-old daughter. Ji-sung had said this helped her say farewell to her child, but “many psychologists have come up and said this might, in some cases, make the grieving process longer”. The discussion has yet to take hold in Mexico, where the practice of digital resurrections exploded in popularity this year.