Philippine Senator’s Deepfake Post Raises Fresh Disinformation Concerns

Senator Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa, the former chief of the Philippine National Police and a close ally of former President Rodrigo Duterte, set off a national debate in the Philippines in mid-June after he shared an AI-generated “deepfake” video in support of beleaguered Vice President Sara Duterte.

Dela Rosa was responsible for executing the bloody anti-narcotics campaign waged by Rodrigo Duterte during his 2016-22 presidency. Now with Duterte isolated in The Hague and his daughter Sara facing impeachment, Dela Rosa, a self-styled strongman, has launched a staunch defense of the Davao dynasty.

Sara Duterte is currently in the midst of an impeachment trial that could see her barred from politics for life. She is accused of large-scale corruption and plotting to assassinate President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Her trial, along with her father’s extradition to the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity, represent two key chapters in the bitter fallout between the Duterte and Marcos clans. Sara Duterte and her supporters deny the charges against her.

Senator Dela Rosa took the fight to Facebook, sharing a video to his nearly 1 million followers last month. The video, which depicts two male Filipino students being interviewed “TikTok style” on the street, has been viewed over 7 million times and has received hundreds of thousands of interactions.

In the video, the students share messages of support for the vice president, arguing that the pursuit of Duterte is “politically motivated,” and that politicians who are serious about rooting out corruption should look at themselves first. The video advances a key narrative of the Duterte camp: that the vice president is on the receiving end of an establishment stitch-up.

However, neither the students nor the interview were real. The video was a “deepfake”: a sophisticated form of media that utilizes AI and machine learning techniques to produce audio and video that, at this point, can be entirely believable to the layman's eye. Podcast or TikTok-style interviews have been a particularly popular format for content creators, sometimes depicting celebrities or ordinary people saying or doing things outlandish or amusing. Many of these kinds of videos are clearly fabrications, signposted by their heavily comedic slant or unbelievable scenarios.

However, the video shared by Dela Rosa signaled a departure from the virtual amusement park, not just because of how advanced the AI technology is, but also about how the set-up of the interaction is indisputably plausible. The students’ accents and uniform, the depiction of a typical Filipino urban scene behind them, the articulation of well-constructed arguments: all are strikingly convincing. The creator of the video has evidently gone to great lengths to make the video believable.

Eagle eyed “netizens” were quick to spot the fake and called out Dela Rosa for sharing the video to further a political cause. The Inquirer reported how one netizen called on the senator to verify the authenticity of videos before sharing them, saying that many people “believe in you… and think the artificial intelligence video [is real].”

A day later, Malacañang Palace Press Officer Claire Castro criticized Dela Rosa, saying that “disinformation, fake news should not be [shared] by government officials. It creates doubts and further erodes trust when disinformation and fake news come from high-ranking officials themselves.”

Despite widespread condemnation, Dela Rosa doubled down on his position. At the time of writing, the video, although now subject to a Rappler supported fact-check that precedes it, is still available on Facebook. In response to the fallout, Dela Rosa stated that “if that’s AI, the creator has a point. If it’s not AI, then the kids speaking have a point” before going on to describe his adversaries as “trolls.”

Much of the debate around Dela Rosa’s actions has centered around his recklessness in being “fooled” or “tricked” into sharing an AI-generated video, with some suggesting that the former police chief could have mistaken the video as authentic. Dela Rosa himself shared the video alongside the caption “at least the children understand the situation,” perhaps implying that he thought the students in the video were real.

However, there is another more alarming theory: that Dela Rosa knew entirely that the video and the opinions shared in it were fake but chose to share it with his followers anyway. In this view, his sharing of the video was an endorsement of a kind of post-truth political discourse that has little regard for what is true and whether people would believe it as such, so long as it furthers a particular cause with maximum impact. In that regard the saga has echoes with U.S. President Donald Trump’s sharing of a bizarre AI video depicting Gaza as a “Dubai-style paradise” earlier this year.

Social media has for several years been the central platform for campaigning and political sparring in the Philippines, much like in the U.S. and elsewhere. It was an effective tool in the elections of the previous two presidents, which is no surprise given the fact that the Philippines has consistently ranked first in the world for social media use. Furthermore, while other countries step up efforts to regulate social media, the Philippines remains largely free of such intervention. This has led Rest of World to describe the Philippines as a “breeding ground for disinformation.”

Dela Rosa’s casual lean into post-truth politics demonstrates how polarized Philippine politics has become, largely due to the bitter Marcos-Duterte feud. It is likely that Duterte’s supporters will rejoice in the message of the AI video, equal to the outrage from their adversaries and Marcos's supporters.

This continued political entrenchment and polarization, fueled by social media, is evident in Philippine discourse in which truth and facts are often secondary. More worryingly, it seems to suggest that Filipinos are vulnerable to disinformation and deceit not just from other citizens, but also from officials elected to high office. The fallout from Dela Rosa’s sharing of the video will not be an isolated event; with AI becoming more sophisticated by the day, many more such outrages are likely to come.