AI age

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) is in a bind on the onslaught of technology and its effects on voting particularly without a law to regulate the online presence of those seeking public office.

While there are good and bad forms of artificial intelligence (AI), Comelec chairperson George Garcia said the focus now is stopping deep fakes. Deep fakes replicate an individual’s image and even voice to make them talk and act based on programmed instructions or scripts.

He said that technologies that will confuse voters and even candidates will not be allowed. Comelec enters the labyrinth of new technology in implementing the ban since it cannot impose it without coordinating with global technology giants.

“If we are going to ban certain AI or deep fakes, social media platforms like Facebook and X must be fully aware that these forms of AI are prohibited under Philippine settings,” the poll chief said.

“The Comelec will have to be proactive because the new technologies may pose danger to our democracy,” according to Garcia. “We do not need to make representations and plead for a certain post to be taken down because it violated elections laws and it will take long before it is removed.”

Garcia worried over a situation where the Comelec is regulating the elections but it will have to plead to the online platforms to remove irregular posts.

“Suppose there is a policy and a prohibition. In that case, we can say to the platforms, ‘You have to implement these policies or we will go after you like what we did in the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections when we talked to e-wallet operators if they are used for vote buying, then we will have to go after them,’” he explained.

In the Philippines, social media posts mostly fall under the freedom of expression guaranteed under the Constitution, tempered only by libel and similar laws. Unfortunately, social media’s leap has made it necessary for the government to have a say.

“We regulate television, radio and newspapers during the campaigns, and media outfits would have to make a report to the Comelec,” Garcia said.

In social media, however, we cannot impose limits. Even the expenditures of a candidate in social media are beyond the Comelec’s control. The contents cannot be regulated. A law might be needed to regulate social media during the campaign period, which will cover only the candidates.

Garcia said the Comelec is issuing the ban on AI early on so that it can be challenged before the Supreme Court and have it resolved before the campaign period.

“I do not subscribe to the usual excuse of politicians that they are not responsible for most of the social media posts but what we wanted is that those whose face and name appear in the post should be made responsible.”

“In the absence of a law regulating social media during the election period, all we can do right now is to require candidates to submit all their online sites,” he explained. In such a scenario, Comelec then becomes powerless in the absence of a law because its hands are tied thus raising the question of how penalties can be imposed.

In the law’s absence, he said Comelec could require all social media posts of a candidate to be limited to the sites or addresses that will be submitted to the poll body. Then there’s the question of social media influencers who are on the payroll of candidates beyond the reach of the Comelec.

“We are calling out to Congress, Comelec badly needs a law to regulate social media just to equalize everything. The situation is very inequitable to those who can’t pay for their social media presence.”

The problem of the Comelec on social media concerns the content and time that candidates can use because the platform is unregulated. AI will defy regulation since the technology will be hard to stop with whatever form of restrictions the government can think of.

The best step for Comelec is to turn to an intense education of the public on how to spot deceptive posts and not vote for candidates who benefit from these.