How GenAI Influenced The 2025 Philippine Election – OpEd
The rise of generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) is quietly reshaping electoral politics in Southeast Asia. Gen AI is becoming increasingly like a co-pilot in political understanding, structuring choices, and influencing opinions rather than merely serving as a tool to assist with information seeking. As these technologies become more integrated into daily life, they are beginning to influence how people participate in democratic processes and political decision-making.
In the Philippines’ 2025 midterm elections, more voters turned to tools like ChatGPT to look up facts and help make strategic voting decisions, narrow down candidate options, and sometimes change how they voted. The experiences of Filipino voters provide an understanding of how Gen AI systems move from novelty to necessity in democratic participation.
One of the most notable patterns emerging from voter engagement with Gen AI is the transition from simple information gathering to strategy formulation. Voters said they no longer just ask who is running or what a candidate stands for; they ask AI how best to vote and prevent undesired electoral outcomes. Gen AI tools facilitate this shift by offering prompt-responsive outputs tailored to the user’s intent. For instance, some voters sought AI guidance on abstaining from races where no candidate aligned with their political values. Others asked for strategic approaches to block frontrunners or fill out 12 senatorial slates to avoid vote dilution. In many cases, voters acknowledged that their final decisions were shaped, in part, by the reasoning and advice generated by AI tools.
Conversations between users and the Gen AI suggests that the tools are no longer just information vessels. They now play a role in how political meaning is made, which helps voters articulate values, weigh trade-offs, and frame arguments. In this sense, AI functions as a mediating agent in democratic judgment, where it collaboratively shapes political reasoning through interactive engagement.
Still, the discursive power in this engagement has limits. The AI-human conversations depend entirely on what the user asks, the available online information, and the built-in filters that prevent AI from leaning too far from one’s political direction. While AI can guide the decision, the voter is still in control.
AI tools often reinforce existing biases when users ask to validate a pre-selected candidate or craft social media postings aligned with their partisan views. In that role, Gen AI becomes a mirror more than a moderator — organizing arguments to support prior beliefs rather than challenging them. However, for some users who asked more open-ended questions, the tool produced results that were not part of their preliminary choices, allowing them to reconsider, which they had previously ignored. The recommended candidates frequently come from grassroots or activist movements with limited attention from the mainstream media.
These contrasting experiences highlight the voter’s role in shaping the outcome. Users with technical know-how and critical thinking skills can better frame productive questions and assess AI outputs. Others, however, who lack these skills have a higher risk of accepting AI responses at face value despite their inherent limitations.
Unlike static media sources, Gen AI platforms are highly responsive to user intent. The tone, scope, and neutrality of the information depend almost entirely on how voters structure their prompt. This user-driven experience provides a sense of empowerment, but also carries risks to how people form information-based opinions. If a prompt is biased toward the user’s beliefs, the AI may reinforce existing opinions rather than challenge them. This can lead to echo chambers, where voters are exposed to views that confirm their political perceptions, which eventually limits critical thinking and distorts their understanding of the political landscape.
While the user’s intent is central to navigating Gen AI, the systems in which these tools operate cannot be overlooked. It is essential to emphasize that these tools are developed by private tech companies that identify which content is prioritized, how the responses are framed, and which information sources are considered credible, a process that can result in harmful consequences without any public scrutiny.
Take OpenAI’s Chat GPT, for example It generates political advice using algorithms the company claims are neutral. Yet, such advice is grounded in proprietary criteria not disclosed to users. The risk is that voters unknowingly rely on a system shaped by corporate interests rather than democratic transparency.
Despite Gen AI’s growing interest, many voters were clear: AI did not decide for them. Human judgment remained central. Voters often verified AI outputs, especially when the tool failed to mention known advocacy work of specific candidates or omitted perceived qualified candidates due to data gaps. Sometimes, users manually reinserted these names into their shortlist after realizing the AI response lacked completeness.
At present, Gen AI tools are not a substitute for political agency. Instead, these tools can accelerate and structure political decision-making, provided that users retain a healthy skepticism and commitment to verifying the outcomes through credible networks and independent thinking.
The experience of Filipino voters in the recent 2025 Philippine midterm elections offers early insights into the role of AI technology in democratic participation in Southeast Asia. As digital literacy increases and Gen AI tools become more accessible, we can expect broader integration of AI in political decision-making not only among voters but also in political campaigns, advocacy groups, and institutions.
As the technology becomes more integrated in people’s lives, we need a proactive framework for Gen AI literacy in a democratic context that goes beyond prompt engineering. We need a framework highlighting source evaluation, ethical awareness, and civic responsibility. Institutions must also play a role in ensuring that Gen AI supports, rather than distorts democratic norms.
Generative AI is no longer just for work productivity or casual chats. It now affects how people understand and act in political systems. As evidenced by the experiences of voters from the Philippines during the 2025 midterm elections, AI didn’t just inform voters, it helped shape their political decisions.
The challenge ahead is to ensure that AI’s expanding role in electoral politics leads to deeper understanding and broader engagement, not just more personalized choices or politically filtered results.
Christian Jaycee Samonte
Christian Jaycee Samonte is a researcher at an AI-driven research and strategy company. His work focuses on political communication, gender, and emerging technologies. He holds a master’s degree in Speech Communication from the University of the Philippines Diliman.
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