A Facebook post shows Vice President Sara Duterte in a police mugshot holding a booking placard for three counts of grave threats. This is fake and created using artificial intelligence.
The fake post published on Sept. 5 carries this caption:
“Ayan na Mugshot ni Sara Duterte
Grabe ang Quezon City Regional Trial Court
Wala daw sa inyong tiwala si #SaraDuterte
(Here’s Sara Duterte’s mugshot
The Quezon City Regional Trial Court is terrible
SaraDuterte says she does not trust you).”
In the image, Duterte appears against a police height chart in a yellow shirt, holding a placard marked with case numbers QCRTC-CR-2026-001234, QCRTC-CR-2026-001235, and QCRTC-CR-2026-001236 under three counts of grave threats.
A review of the image confirms that the entire booking photo is synthetic. The placard displays an invented station prefix and consecutive placeholder digits “1234,” “1235,” and “1236,” typical of artificial intelligence prompts rather than genuine court records.
Also, an explicit “AI-generated content” watermark is stamped on the lower-left corner of the image. However, because it is printed in small, low-contrast text against the subject’s shirt, it went largely unnoticed, misleading many casual scrollers.
VERA Files Fact Check ran the image through multiple detection tools to confirm the manipulation. SightEngine flagged it as 99% likely AI-generated, while both IsThisAI and DeepAI reported 97% confidence in AI creation. WasItAI and ImageWhisperer similarly detected artificial anomalies, though Hive Moderation returned an outlier score of only 9%.
Official records and statements confirm that no legitimate police mugshot of the vice president was ever taken. Following an arrest warrant issued on Friday by Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 98 for three counts of grave threats, Duterte voluntarily appeared at the Quezon City Hall of Justice on Sept. 5 to post a ₱360,000 bail.
Under Section 2, Rule 114 of the Revised Rules of Criminal Procedure, an accused posting bail is required to attach recent photographs showing front, left, and right profiles directly to the bail application. As clarified under Office of the Court Administrator Circular No. 204-2022-AA, police booking and detention certifications are necessary only when an accused has been arrested or held under police custody, not when an individual voluntarily posts bail directly before the court where the case is pending.
According to her legal counsel Paul Lawrence Lim, the vice president fulfilled standard bail requirements by submitting her own photographs and fingerprints directly to the clerk of court.
The fabricated image surfaced shortly after Duterte posted bail.
Posted by FB page Balita at Kaalaman, the post has so far garnered 1,174 reactions, 310 comments, and 130 shares.
