DICT steps up efforts vs abuse of AI tools

THE Philippine government is ramping up its drive to combat deepfakes and abuse of generative AI (artificial intelligence) tools as these have become a global concern, Department of Information Communications Technology (DICT) Secretary Ivan Uy said Monday.

Uy noted that the country has been very active in flagging AI threats he tagged a “scamdemic” and “has actually surpassed drugs in terms of profitability for the cybercriminals.”

“So, the scams are pervasive all over the world. And, in fact, what I have seen from the statistics, for instance, Singapore has the highest per capita loss in terms of scams. It’s on average 5,000 Singapore dollars,” Uy said during the maiden broadcast of “Malacañang Insider” on state-ran PTV-4.

“And so, during our Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) ministerial meetings, we are one in raising these concerns, all throughout,” he added.

Uy noted that Thailand and Singapore are among those with the highest scam incidents, mostly from deepfakes technology — often used for voice and video images by replacing somebody else’s voice, video image or photo over an existing image.

Cybercriminals using deepfakes are pouring huge amounts of resources to perpetuate illicit activities on various platforms through the use of scamming, phishing, ransomware and many more.

Uy warned that deepfakes and generative AI tools could possibly be used in the electoral process where unscrupulous individuals use them for political gain.

“Especially during elections, where they use them to malign or to discredit certain people by attributing quotations or phrases that are extremely unpopular and then making it appear that that person uttered those statements. And, that becomes even more destructive, if let’s say, they’re released, a few days before people cast their ballot, so that there is no more time anymore for the real person to say, ‘I never said that,'” he said.

This problem is not exclusive to developing nations but is also experienced by first-world countries such as the United States, Uy noted.

Because of this, the DICT is pushing for the creation and implementation of policies and even laws that would give the government more teeth in fighting cyber-related illegal acts.

“Well, we need to probably come up with more responsive and timely policies in order to address this especially when it comes to matters of national security,” Uy said.

He cited Malaysia as one country that stepped up efforts to combat deepfakes and misinformation online by imposing penalties and ramping up government regulation by requiring licenses and permits for social media platforms.

Recognizing there could be laws specific to problems being addressed as anti-scam, anti-misinformation and anti-deepfakes, Uy strongly pushed for a more comprehensive law rather than “bits and pieces” of registration that addresses each of those activities.

“We need a new law. Actually, I think we need to have a more comprehensive law rather than bits and pieces of registration that addresses small items of specific items. For instance, you have an anti-scam law, you have an anti-misinformation law, you have an anti-deepfakes law, something like that,” Uy said.