Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte urged the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) to come up with a working system that would monitor and automatically takedown political deepfakes amid the poll season.
Villafuerte acknowledged the challenge of controlling the activities of all 18,000 candidates vying for positions in the 2025 national and local elections, hence the need for the Comelec and the DICT, through its Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC), to work together.
This is to effectively regulate all political aspirants’ campaign activities, especially online amid the threats of artificial intelligence (AI) generated contents that could negatively influence or manipulate voters’ decisions in the upcoming elections.
“Now that we know everyone who is running in the May 2025 polls, the government needs to come up soon enough with an efficient way of monitoring and taking down illegal campaign materials posted online,” said Villafuerte, author of a pending House Bill that seeks to regulate the use of AI.
The lawmaker noted that the Comelec, DICT and CICC all expressed concerns about the likelihood of some politicians taking advantage of AI technology to deliberately “spread misinformation and disinformation” about their respective opponents during the heat of the campaign season.
Editor’s Note: This story will be updated.
