AI resurrection of Brazilian singer for car ad sparks joy and ethical worries

The premature death in 1982 of one of Brazil’s most treasured musicians left her homeland reeling. “Brazil without Elis,” mourned one front page after the legendary singer Elis Regina unexpectedly died at the age of 36.

So when Elis Regina recently reemerged, performing a soul-stirring duet with her daughter, the Grammywinning singer Maria Rita, there were similarly charged scenes of catharsis and nostalgia.

“It’s seven-something in the morning … and I’m bawling my eyes out,” tweeted Brazil’s first lady, Rosângela Lula da Silva, one of millions of Brazilians moved to tears by the performance.

The AI-created collaboration – which took more than 2,400 hours to produce and was made for a commercial celebrating Volkswagen’s 70th birthday in Brazil – has also sparked an impassioned debate over the ethics of artificial intelligence and its impact on the music industry and society as a whole.

Newspapers and social media have been filled with discomfort and in some cases outrage at an onscreen revival that Elis Regina Carvalho Costa, who died more than four decades ago, could not herself have approved. Some critics remembered how the singer, commonly known as Elis, had been a staunch opponent of Brazil’s 1964-85 military dictatorship – a regime Volkswagen notoriously collaborated with.

This week, Brazil’s advertising watchdog, Conar, announced it would investigate a possible breach of ethics after receiving complaints questioning whether it was right to use such methods “to bring a deceased person back to life” on screen.

“Questions have been raised over whether [the use of such techniques] might cause some to confuse fiction with reality, above all children and teenagers,” Conar said, promising a ruling in about 45 days.

Volkswagen has defended its viral campaign, in which the face of a female double playing Elis was altered with facial recognition software to give the impression that the singer was performing. “The idea … was to use artificial intelligence to create a unique moment that reunited … one of the greatest singers in the history of Brazilian music, and her daughter Maria Rita, a contemporary icon,” the company said, adding that the production had the blessing of the singer’s family.

Speaking to the Guardian, Elis’s eldest son, the music producer João Marcello Bôscoli, hailed the discussion his mother’s reappearance had triggered and how the advert had revealed “a more emotional, playful and artistic” side to a technology more often associated with fake news and memes.

“Elis has provoked a debate about the future … despite having physically died more than 40 years ago … I can’t think of another person in Brazil apart from Elis who could have generated