TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A Taiwanese individual leveraged AI tools to generate the portrait of a 17-year-old teenager that might resemble the look today of a 3-year-old girl who went missing during the Taipei 101 new year firework display in 2010.
The girl, Huang Pei-hsuan (黃佩璇), was separated from her auntie by crowds near the Vieshow cinemas in Xinyi District that night. The location is just five minutes from what used to be the world’s tallest skyscraper.
UDN reported that the girl was living with her auntie and uncle at the time, along with the couple's five other children, after Huang's mother passed away. The girl reportedly had developmental delay and could barely speak, though she could tell her own name.
Huang was lost in the crowd at 0:25 a.m. after using the bathroom at a cinema, according to an FB post by the acquaintance of a family member. The girl’s panicked auntie looked in the building before seeking police assistance.
Her uncle filed a missing report the next day but to no avail. A family member recalled that surveillance footage at a metro station in New Taipei's Yonghe District was the last image of her, and she seemed to be accompanied by a man, a few hours after going missing.
In Taiwan, a missing person can be declared dead seven years after going missing, but Huang's family did not do so. Instead, her family have not given up hope of finding her and keep posting in social media about her disappearance.
In January, there was an effort by a group of online individuals to exchange intelligence about the girl's whereabouts. One of them leveraged generative artificial intelligence to match pictures and descriptions of Huang to create a portrait of what she would look like today — with the hope of finding the teen and reuniting her with her family for the Lunar New Year holiday.
