May 4, 2021 3 min read

This story originally appeared on Cine Premiere

By Brenda Medel

Soriana, the Mexican supermarket chain, launched its new campaign entitled “Soriana, that of all Mexicans” on social media and television. However, this campaign has broken conventions, as they bring back one of the most important figures of the Golden Age of national cinema: Mario Moreno “Cantinflas” . Go right now, at the top of this note, the supermarket commercial!

Through a statement, the Soriana company recognized this work as a feat in its business strategy because for the first time the famous deep fake technology has been used in our country to ‘resurrect’ such an important character in pop culture Mexican as “Cantinflas” is. With this, the actor and comedian becomes the first Mexican to be recreated with this technique.

^{Image: Soriana via Cine Premiere}

“Quiubo chatos? Do you know that always filled me with pride? Being Mexican,” recites the comedian in front of the camera, accompanied by a reddish background. The theme of the commercial is simple: “Cantinflas” appears to highlight several of the elements and cultural values of Mexican families, which regardless of the trade, profession, gender or age enhance the meaning of being part of a great family.

“Seeing again on the screens the great ‘Cantinflas’ takes us back as Mexicans to the dozens of characters that made Mario Moreno famous, where the pride of being Mexican was reflected in all his films, and today, thanks to technology, we can feel Again, ‘Cantinflas’ and Soriana are authentically Mexican in all their expression . It is also a pride to be one of the first to use this technique in Mexico, since thanks to this type of technology we can feel Cantinflas enter our homes, making more present Mexican pride, ”the organization highlighted in the statement.

This is state of the art technology. Cantinflas the FIRST MEXICAN “made” in DEEP FAKE
Find it on the page of @TiendaSoriana #cantinflas #deepfake pic.twitter.com/6veCOZ4LUr

– MARIO MORENO CANTINFLAS (@MundoCantinflas) May 1, 2021

What is deep fake technology?

In very simple words, deep fakes use a form of artificial intelligence called deep learning to create images of false situations or events. That is, replacing the likeness of one person to another through videos or any digital medium using unsupervised algorithms known as RGAs and combining them with existing videos or images. In this way it is easy to join people, celebrities or fictional characters in audiovisual material in which they have never participated ( via ).