AI project imagines adult faces of children who disappeared during Argentina’s military dictatorship

If a baby was taken from their parents four decades ago during Argentina’s military dictatorship, what would that person look like today? Argentine publicist Santiago Barros has been trying to answer that question using artificial intelligence to create images of what the children of parents who disappeared during the dictatorship might look like as adults.

Almost every day, Barros uploads these images to an Instagram account called iabuelas, which is a portmanteau in Spanish for artificial intelligence, or IA, and grandmother, or abuela – taken from the well-known activist group Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo that searches for missing children.