Unlocking the Philippines’ AI era.
The Philippines has many of the foundations for AI-powered growth: a large English-speaking workforce, globally connected services industries, a growing digital economy and a creative sector with the potential to reach audiences far beyond its borders.
The next opportunity is to translate those strengths into higher-value growth across the whole economy. Used well, AI can help workers and businesses become more productive, strengthen sectors such as business process outsourcing and the creative industries, enable smaller firms to reach overseas customers and support entirely new forms of work.
Today, we’re publishing a factsheet looking at some of the opportunities AI could create in the Philippines. We estimate that faster AI-enabled R&D alone could create an additional ₱56 billion in economic value by 2040. Across the economy, AI integration could add ₱1.8 trillion to national GVA, equivalent to a 7% increase. Realising that opportunity will mean helping smaller businesses adopt AI, enabling people to move beyond basic use and building confidence through skills and effective safeguards.
Here are five opportunities and priorities from AI we looked at in the Philippines:
If SMEs adopted AI at the same rate as large enterprises, they could unlock ₱560 billion (US$9.7 billion) in additional value by 2035, equivalent to 2% of GDP.
The biggest benefits come when people know how to use AI in more advanced ways. Among the online adults sampled in the Philippines, 22% are “light users” of AI, using it mainly for simple chat and drafting; 51% are “intermediate users”; and 16% qualify as “AI Super Users”.
By generating and ranking new ideas, AI systems could help scientists and researchers in the Philippines explore twice as many plausible hypotheses each year, increasing the chances of breakthrough discoveries in both the private and public sectors.
In our polling, 45% of workers said they wanted to better understand how AI models work, 47% wanted to learn more about practical use cases, and 53% wanted to know how to prompt AI models more effectively.
In our polling, more than 89% of people in the Philippines said it was important for AI developers to incorporate safeguards such as pre-release testing, independent verification, and greater protection for children and other vulnerable users.
The factsheet also looks at how AI could strengthen industries that are central to the Filipino economy. AI-assisted customer support and workflow tools could unlock ₱180 billion in additional annual value for the BPO sector, while AI creative tools could add ₱63 billion in annual value across the economy and help generate a further ₱68 billion in creative exports. Agentic fraud detection could reduce scam losses by 31%, avoiding up to ₱110 billion in consumer losses each year.
Growth in AI software, infrastructure and AI-enabled businesses could also support 250,000 new jobs by 2035. With the right skills, safeguards and support for adoption, AI can help the Philippines turn its existing strengths into broader, more resilient and higher-value growth.