MEXICO CITY, Oct 16 — Veronica Rosas is one of tens of thousands of Mexican mothers searching for a child who disappeared into a vortex of violence fuelled by brutal cartel turf wars.

Now, artificial intelligence may offer new hope to families searching for Mexico’s more than 134,000 missing people.

Two new AI tools are being developed to help families and investigators find answers.

Rosas’ son, Diego, was 16 when he went missing in the central town of Ecatepec in September 2015 after leaving home to meet some friends.

The state prosecutor’s office said he was 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 like Diego’s have prompted two universities to develop AI tools that they hope will provide answers.

Regresa, meaning “Return”, was developed by Mexico’s main public university, the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

It uses anthropometry – the measurement of the human body – to generate images showing how the faces of missing children may have changed over time, updating images on missing persons posters that otherwise remain frozen at the age they disappeared.

With investigations often dragging on for years, updated likenesses are a recurring demand from 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 reflect typical Mexican features.

Regresa’s developers took a different approach, creating their own image bank using hundreds of photos and data from 75 Mexican volunteers to produce portraits with more typically Mexican features.

Anthropologist Ana Juarez, one of the project’s founders, said Regresa also uses a different technology to age the children’s faces.

“Many software programs 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 imaging that predicts changes in the skull and face.

Peace boxes and posters 

Years of official inaction have driven many families in Mexico to conduct their own investigations into the disappearances of their loved ones.

AI is also being used by an anthropologist at the private Ibero-American University to help make those searches more targeted.

Emiliano Zolla is mapping missing people by gender, age and the circumstances of their disappearance in the hope of helping families narrow their searches.

His observations, based on data about cases in the State of Mexico, the country’s most populous state, include that many of the missing 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, inviting people to 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 like hers have installed dozens of “peace boxes” in churches across the country to gather information about missing people.

They also put up photographs of their 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.