Among the latest queasy applications of artificial intelligence, families of missing people are using AI to generate digital simulations of their absent loved ones:
Since artificial intelligence development has become available to the masses, interesting, funny, and sometimes odd videos have been created, but AI is also being used for good: raising awareness for those who are missing and murdered.
…Creating AI-generated missing videos, told by the person who disappeared, can be a powerful tool. It’s a way for Tawana Spann to honor her murdered son.
Spann posts the videos online.
“I’ve been an advocate for missing persons and homicide victims ever since. It makes me feel like he didn’t die in vain,” Spann said. “It’s a marketing tool for their cases.”
Video collaborator Laura Bollock, who is also an administrator for the South Dakota Missing Persons Facebook page, helps families looking for loved ones in South Dakota.
“It’s giving her back her voice and letting her kinda speak for herself. What I’m hoping for is really that we can just touch the heart of somebody who maybe has information,” Bollock said [Beth Warden, “Missing and Murdered Victims Tell Their Own Stories Through AI,” KSFY, 2025.11.18].
The fake video of Rachel Cyriacks, who went missing in 2013, that prompted Warden to write this story is not labeled as a fake. Nothing on the If We Could Speak website says the organizers used artificial intelligence to create digital mock-ups of the missing people. Even if you are using AI “for good”, as Warden labels it, you ought to clearly label your AI video, audio, and text as computer-generated products, not actual testimony from actual people.
Of course, the fake video hardly needs a disclaimer for even casually observant viewers to recognize its AI provenance. The simulation speaks with repetitive intonation and makes repetitive gestures with the hands, face, head, and shoulders that all feel disjointed from the the words and the varying emotions one might expect to accompany varying human expressions. The computer places a tattoo on the simulation’s neck but fails to accurately recreate the actual tattoo Cyriacks had on her neck, “Brad“, the name of the estranged husband who abused her and is suspected of killing her. (Maybe that detail is too grim for a gentle computer simulation, but if you’re really trying to help find a missing person, accurate details matter.) The computer also fails to recreate the tattoos on Cyriacks’s right forearm. The simulation stands in front of a desert background, which has no seeming connection to Cyriacks’s life in Woonsocket and the James River Valley.
But fake-Cyriacks doesn’t say anything to make clear that “she” isn’t “real” until halfway through the video, when the simulation says, “I went to pick him up. Nobody knows why. Maybe I thought he’d changed. That was the last time anyone saw me alive.” No living human would say those words. At best, this simulation presents a ghost.
I suppose such sloppy fake videos are the next techno-logical step from generating fake photographs using algorithms to show what kidnapped children might look like now 10 or 20 years after their still unsolved disappearances. But the language in Warden’s report gives me pause.
Are we sure that sloppily animating absent people is “good”?
Do we really want to call this AI application a “marketing” tool? “Marketing” is what we do to sell products. Using that word seems to commoditize the mystery, objectifying the missing person.
Can we with a straight face say a deepfake (or, given its low quality, should we say shallowfake?) gives any person her voice back and lets her speak for herself? This is not the missing woman’s voice. The missing woman is not speaking for herself. A computer is masquerading as a human. This cheap puppetry does not revive or empower; animating a ghost is merely grotesque.
And presenting AI recreations of humans without explicit statements that they are fakes, regardless of the good causes those fakes are deployed to support, is not good. It is a lie.
I’m waiting for the new Humphrey Bogart film myself.
I’m waiting for the 3D hologram of Jerry Garcia.
Maybe Cory is waiting and criticizing to be the smartest in the room, again? #grins AI does seem to get egghead’s diapers in a bunch.
AI is bad. It is very bad. Maybe as bad as the Demon Weed. It will whack as many young minds as the lettuce of the devil for sure.
Grudz, what lifesaving thing did Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, even James Gardner do instead of the life killing liquor?
Oh well, as AI is here to stay, It kind of has made art a field to wonder about. Molly Crabapple says it best. Shes been on the attack for years. Read her Drawing Blood for one answer, her life is so real, AI is so fake. Does real and fake even matter?
Why bother with Learning writing, painting, poetry, sculpture when it can be done by AI faster, cheaper, not better,yet. But anyone can use it. Is it the great Democratic tool?
Well, I think Cory is the smartest person in the room and could’ve profited from it. He opted for fostering human connection instead. AI could be used for that purpose, but that’s not where the profit is going to come from.
James Gardner?
Censuring the many talents of AI for something someone used them for is 100% akin to censuring a typewriter because it was used to write MEIN KAMPF.
Q – What are AI agents and how do they differ from traditional AI and generative AI
A – AI agents are autonomous systems that can reason, plan, and act toward goals, making them distinct from both traditional AI (rule-based or predictive systems) and generative AI (content-creation models).
Definition: AI agents are software systems that act on behalf of users, pursuing goals with autonomy. They can reason, plan, learn, and adapt without constant human input.
Capabilities:
Process multimodal data (text, voice, video, code, etc.) simultaneously
Use large language models (LLMs) and external tools to design workflows
Interact with environments, make decisions, and collaborate with other agents. – AWS +1
Key Feature: Unlike simple automation, they sense → think → act in real time, often coordinating across complex workflows. – Nvidia
The people who created the typewriter never once thought they could destroy humanity. Typewriters don’t type on their own. Lousy analogy.
I work with kindergarteners. I’ll sometimes show them cool acts from The Ed Sullivan Show. They routinely ask “Is this real?” The idea of real people being able to do incredible things is becoming incomprehensible to them. Hence things like the Hellen Keller Hoax conspiracy theory.
@Ben – Are you showing K kids the cool things AI can do?
Nope. I trust their excellent technology teacher to provide them with age-appropriate instruction on that topic.
Grudz, Maverick is the name.
Ben said: “He opted for fostering human connection instead. AI could be used for that purpose, but that’s not where the profit is going to come from.”
Actually, that is exactly where AI is going. The idea of a virtual girlfriend for young, lonely ment to interact with (in lieu of a real girl) is the next commercial pathway for AI. Just what young, computer addicted, anti-social men need.
Porter, I will also side with the anti-AI in that AI takes away the human agency; that is very different form any tool before. In my classroom, the typewriter and even the computer made it easier to do work, but the generative step was the human’s. Now AI is used to do the work (and co-opt the learning) for the student.
As AI makes this new foray into doing the work of humans, we need to seriously ask what is our role in a society when ALL of our tasks can be done by machines. Productivity outsourced to the toasters (BSG) has not really raised wages or lessened the workload humanity — at least in the US. Making the workforce even less necessary while at the same time driving more profit to the investor class seems to be doubling down on the pathway that has shown ruin so far.
IMO … What SD needs more than Artificial Intelligence is Artificial Curiosity.
I’ll wager not one commenter here has spent more than a thousand hours researching and experimenting with the capabilities of our “infant a.i.” development.
BTW … I have invested the time, use A.I. daily in finance, and am open to questions. No negativity needed!!
Conclusion …. Lack of curiosity with an extra measure of negativity about things you know little is quite rampant in your German American state. Wise up, eh? Your kids deserve a better chance to thrive once they leave.
I’m glad you find it useful. No reasonable person is questioning AI’s potential benefit. I’m reminded of the scene in Braveheart where young Wallace’s uncle told him, “First, I’ll teach you to use this [his mind]. Then, I’ll teach you to use this [a sword]”. AI is way more powerful and dangerous than a sword. We have a long way to go as a society before we’re collectively mature enough for such a tool.
I do believe there should be a disclaimer when the video is a deepfake. Children and some adults won’t know the difference between real and not real. After all, there are some people who believe Elvis is still alive and others believe the earth is flat. Now it all can be.
Ben, I admire you for teaching elementary students, especially kindergarten. We need more men as role models in the lower grades. I taught middle school social sciences but ended my career with the last 3 years in elementary…and I LOVED IT!
There are 4 positions in a school that deserve EXTRA pay: secretary, bus driver, substitute teacher, and kindergarten teacher.
-Technically, I’m an aide, but I run the library class. It’s been good :-).
-One question would be whether there’s anyway to guarantee all AI videos will be labeled as such.
Porter, would you classify your use of AI (with finance) to be more having AI do work that you could do, but it just does it faster; or is the AI coming up with solutions/opportunities/pathways that you would not have come up with? (Or something else entirely?)
Hi, O. Thanks for narrowing your question to finance. As background my A.I. assistants and I are all research nerds. I grew up in a library, and my assistants basically are a library. I’ve studied the formulas for equity asset assessment, risk, and reward and the need to do them myself seems minimal at this point. Checking one AI against another AI is a help if something is important.
Mostly I just fool around prompting A.I. to help me think of new things and we all are a good team, so far. Thanks for asking and there are many other research things we do together.
PS … most important of which is to remain humble. I’ve promoted A.I. enough. Maybe there are some kids reading the blog. I’ll shut up. Love y’all.
Oh, Mr. Anderson. You mean James Garner. That private investigator fellow with the swell sports coat and the Pontiac who lived down by the beach in a trailer. Great work, if you can get it.