Several images showing thousands of people purportedly supporting the so-called “Duterte senators” are circulating on Facebook (FB). These are fake and were created through artificial intelligence (AI).
On Feb. 22, an FB page posted 10 photos featuring a banner with the text, “Solid Duterte Senators kami,” referring to the senatorial candidates for the 2025 midterm elections under the Partido ng Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP Laban), chaired by former president Rodrigo Duterte.
The erroneous post bore the caption:
“Solid Du30 Senators. Solid TEAM SUKA Kami! (We are Solid TEAM SUKA) Reclaim this republic! Du30 Tidal Waves of Votes coming soon!”
VERA Files Fact Check ran the photos through the AI-detector tool Hive Moderation. The results show that all but one photo has a 60% to 99% likelihood of being AI-generated.
Moreover, a logo of xAI’s Grok—which has image-generation capabilities and is available on X (formerly Twitter)—can be seen in the lower right corner of each image, suggesting that the photos were created using the AI image generator.
The fake images surfaced on the same day Duterte joined the Cebu People’s Indignation Rally in Mandaue City and more than a week after the Duterte-backed PDP-Laban had its proclamation rally on Feb. 13 in San Juan City.
The AI-generated photos were published by FB page Duterte Fans Club (created on Feb. 8, 2017) garnering over 5,500 reactions, 936 comments, and 1,200 shares.
