MANILA, Philippines — The national government should pass a comprehensive law to combat the proliferation of deepfakes in the country, the Department of Information and Communications Technology said Monday.
A “deepfake” is a kind of artificial image or video created using a specialized type of machine learning called “deep learning.”
There were lots of allegedly deepfake technology-generated images and videos currently surfacing online, with one being President Ferdinand Marcos being victimized following the release of a video of him allegedly sniffing an illicit substance in time for his third State of the Nation Address.
“I think we need to have a more comprehensive law rather than bits and pieces of legislation that addresses small items or specific items. For instance, you have an anti-scam law; you have an anti-misinformation law; you have [an] anti-deepfake law or something like that,” Uy said during the Malacañang Insider briefing.
If someone’s online conduct causes harm, whether it’s phishing, scamming, deepfakes, misinformation, or anything else, then it has to be covered under that law, he said.
The Philippines currently does not have a regulation on deepfakes but it cited the Article 154 of the Revised Penal Code which punishes anyone who publishes or causes to be published false news that endangers public order or harms the interests or credit of the State.
DICT likewise said that they think there should be a law already to impose penalties on platforms that enable these, particularly social media.
“They’re enablers on this. If you would see, for example, AMLC, Anti-Money Laundering, the banks are enablers or financial institutions, and there are penalties that are imposed on them,” he said.
The DICT official said that even if they are not the criminals themselves, but because they are able to facilitate that criminal activity, there are penalties that are imposed on them.
According to the DICT, since governments do not have control over these platforms, social media companies should have more responsibility over these platforms to counter the proliferation of deepfakes.
A report from Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime said that the Philippines saw the highest growth in deepfake cases with 4,500 percent across the Asia-Pacific Region.
https://globalinitiative.net/analysis/deepfakes-ai-cyber-scam-south-east-asia-organized-crime/
Countries including Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore currently have their data privacy measures to prevent these exploitations but its national governments must have a “more comprehensive and cohesive approach” that is also focused on the prevention and awareness of these AI and deepfake tools, it said.
