Manila, Philippines – When former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in March, Sheila Escordo spoke to a local television station and welcomed the politician to detain on charges of murder related to the war on drugs.
Having lost his 18-year-old brother Ephraim, Escardo grabbed the brother's portrait during an interview with News 5 in the Duterte War and demanded justice in his murder.
A few days later, she was shocked to find an AI-generated video of her murdered brother circulating on Facebook.
“I'm alive, I'm not dead. Are they paying you to do this?” said Ephraim's computer-generated image.
The video was posted online by a pro-dutalte influencer with 11,000 followers and quickly elicited thousands of views on Facebook.
One of the comments was read as “Fake Drug War victims.”
Her News 5 Everywhere was an image of her brother, which influencers were using to fake family tragedy. The video has since been reposted countless times, spreading to other social media platforms, with Duterte supporters covering Escardo every day.
“I awaken hundreds of notifications and hate messages,” she told Al Jazeera.
“The worst thing is to read comments from people who believe this is true!” she added.
The same kind of harassment is levelled to other voiced drug war victims, especially those in groups under the group who actively campaigned for ICC intervention.
Duterte's arrest in March was a fierce power struggle between his former leader and his former ally, the Philippine sitting president Ferdinand Marcos Jr., whose alliance collapsed last year due to differences in opinion over policies, including the US trial of Marcos JR. The president's supporters are now leading efforts to fire each Duterte's daughter Sarah from her post as vice president of the country.
As tensions escalated, supporters of Duterte and Marcos JR used disinformation to intensify their digital smear campaign. Apart from fake accounts and doctor images, Disform Mix has a prominent collection of AI-generated content.
Both Marcos Jr and the Duterte clan are known to deploy disinformation tactics. Marcos Jr. won the election in 2022 after a disinformation campaign that attempted to whitewash the brutal domination of his father Ferdinand Marcos in the '70s and '80s.
However, fact-checkers and experts say the recent increase in posts exercising false stories could be attributed more to Duterte Camp.
Country of False Information
Drug War victims, their families, supporters, and even lawyers say constant online disinformation has targeted them.
In a statement, the National Federation of Lawyers (NUPL), representing Rise Up, a group of victims of the drug war, said that “online hatred” is “directed towards widows, mothers and daughters of victims of the drug war and attempts to blackmail them into silence.”
Both Nupl and Rise Up are now asking the government to investigate the rise in online harassment.
The campaign by Duterte supporters aims to portray the family as persecuted victims who will discredit the ICC, demonize the devils of their critics, and lead to the mid-term vote in May 2025.
“The Duterte Camp aims to deodorize both the patriarch and his daughter's image. They resort to disinformation to get what they want, even if it means twisting certain data,” Arao told Al Jazeera.
He pointed to a post circulating online that the ICC agreed to grant Duterte's request for interim release, but was actually rejected.
The surge in disinformation has sparked concern among Filipinos.
A June report released by Reuters Digital News found that a record number of Filipinos (nearly 7 out of 10) are more interested in disinformation than ever before.
In the same month, Sen. Ronald Dela Rosa, who was allied with Duterte, shared an AI-generated video on his official Facebook page. The video, which showed a young man criticizing “selective justice” targeting Sarah Duterte, was posted on June 14th and earned at least 8.6 million views before it was removed.
The vice president defended the video, saying, “Unless there's a profit, there's no problem sharing AI videos that support me.”
Alao, a mass media expert, retorted, saying that politicians were trying to normalize disinformation and “media literacy is severely necessary.”
Tsek.ph, a pioneering fact-checking coalition in the Philippines, noted that for almost a quarter of the 127 news articles curated by the group, the facts about Duterte's ICC arrest check the facts about Duterte's ICC arrest.
This figure surpasses 20 news related to Sarah Duterte's blast each.
Professor Rachel Khan, TSEK.PH coordinator at Sarah Duterte, said, “For educated people, it reinforces their already ignored image of truth. But for followers, it could reinforce the dictum that “awareness is true.” ”
In fact, the popularity of the Duterte family has declined significantly.
Opinion and approval surveys conducted in March show that at least 51% of the public want Rodrigo Duterte to be brought to justice for his suspicious crime. Similarly, a June poll found that at least 66% of people wanted Sarah Duterte to confront allegations of corruption against her through the bluffing each process.
AI Growth
Last year, the government launched a task force to mitigate “disinformation and AI use.” However, as Marcos Dutarte's rivalry heated up, the surge in disinformation was already noticeable in December.
TSEK.PH tracked the increase in AI use before the mid-term elections held in May this year. From February to May to May, we found that almost a third of the 35 uniquely altered claims “are likely to be involved in deep technology to impersonate public figures or distort reality.”
“This is not an AI, it's a matter of human behavior. It's a matter of disinformation impact manipulation, which is exacerbated by the unethical use of AI tools,” Carljoe Javier, executive director of Data and AI Ethics PH, told Al Jazeera.
All mainstream political forces in the Philippines have, to some extent, supported the agenda by deploying AI technology. The latest Openai Safety Report reveals that Manila-based tech company Comm & Sense has used AI in a campaign that uses thousands of Pro-Marcos JR and anti-Duterte comments across Facebook and Tiktok.
In addition to generating content, the company used AI to analyze political trends and even drafted a public relations strategy.
According to the report, Comm & Sense produced a Tiktok channel to post identical videos with variant captions while processing shell accounts to post comments and increase engagement.
Not only will you create content, but you will also use AI to outline your plans and mark the transition from Marcos JR management, employing troll forces, as you did in the 2022 campaign.
“If we have government resources and a pulpit of bullies, any statement we make to the Marcos government can afford to continue attacking Dutertes and his partisans.”
“If you put AI on your hands already in good public relations and marketing teams, the ability of disinformation is amplified so much. They have one message and can generate 20 different versions instantly,” Javier explained.
The Philippines has several legislation in the Parliament regarding the responsible use of AI. Because of a sound policy approach, Javier believes technical and ethical experts are of great importance.
He said he hopes that the country's leaders will take important steps, but he has doubts about their appetite for the Ethical AI Act.
“Does there be enough driving force for legislators to advance policy, as they may be profiting from the current state of political activity?” he asked.
