Citing BINI's case, solon raises alarm over deepfakes

House Assistant Minority Leader and Gabriela party-list Representative Arlene Brosas on Friday raised the alarm over deepfake content being circulated on social media, citing the case of Pinoy Pop girl groups BINI and G22.

During the interpellation for the proposed 2025 budget of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), Brosas dubbed the deepfakes as “very dangerous.”

“‘Yung rise of deepfake technology poses a significant threat not just to these P-Pop girl groups or celebrities but to our society as a whole. The government should take proactive measures to address this emerging and alarming challenge,” Brosas said.

On September 3,  the management of BINI issued a statement about the "malicious, edited depp fake photos and videos of BINI members."

“We strongly condemn these harmful acts. Our team has already taken action to remove some of these accounts. We are working with the proper government agencies and authorities to identify the individuals behind these acts and pursue legal actions.”

“The safety and well-being of BINI remain our top priority. We will continue to monitor and take necessary measures against any form of exploitation or harassment,” the statement read.

Brosas questioned whether the DICT was aware of such instances and whether they had measures and programs to address deepfake content, not only for popular figures but also ordinary citizens.

For their part, budget sponsor Makati City Representative Luis Campos Jr. said that the DICT will take action on the matter.

“Hindi lang po ‘yung mga popular o ‘yung mga sikat na personalities ang tinututukan at aaksyonan ng DICT, through CICC,” Campos sid.

(It's not just popular or well-known personalities that the DICT focuses on and takes action against through the CICC.)

“Ang ahensya po natin ay… in the process of acquiring the most current equipment and tools to be able to identify deepfakes, first of all, and to be able to track down the perpetrators,” he added.

(Our agency is currently in the process of acquiring the most current equipment and tools to identify deepfakes and track down those responsible.)

However, he stressed that the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) of the DICT is “severely underfunded.”

“Hopefully, in the next budget cycle we can increase the budget, if not in this one for CICC, so that we may be able to eliminate— well, minimize substantially if not totally eliminate this,” Campos said.

Campos said that the DICT also has educational campaigns against deepfakes.

Aside from this, he said the DICT is in the process of securing memorandum of agreements with social media providers.

Data centers

Meanwhile, Bagong Henerasyon party-list Representative Bernadette Herrera-Dy raised the alarm over the lack of data centers in the Philippines.

Herrera stressed that the DICT hosts more than 1,000 government agency systems in cloud services.

“Pero sad to say, lahat ng cloud services na gamit ng DICT at public cloud, majority wala sa Pilipinas ang data. So halos lahat ng government agencies natin ang ginagamit natin public cloud,” she said.

(But sad to say, all the cloud services used by the DICT and the public cloud, majority are stored outside the Philippines. As a result, almost all government agencies in our country rely on public cloud services.)

According to Campos, the DICT requested a P4 billion budget for the creation of three data centers but was given only P750 million.

“‘Yung P750 million kulang po sa isa. So hindi po natin matatapos ‘yung kahit isang data center,” Campos said.

“P750 million is not enough for even one, so we won't be able to complete even a single data center.)

Campos said that the first phase of the program for data centers will be completed with an additional P2 billion.

Meanwhile, COOP-NATCCO Representative Felimon Espares moved to increase the DICT’s budget.

“I manifest to support and request for additional budget of DICT,” he said.

The DICT has a proposed budget of P7.8 billion for 2025, lower than its request of P9 billion.

The House later terminated the budget deliberations for the DICT. —LDF, GMA Integrated News