Lisa spent 15 years working as a content writer in the Philippines. She started right after college and later joined a multinational company in the country's outsourcing industry.
She told the BBC she never felt she needed to use artificial intelligence for her job. She said she always met her deadlines without it.
Eight months into her latest role, and just one month before it was due to become permanent, she was made redundant. She says the company had asked her and her colleagues to edit AI-written material before that happened.
Her editing work was used to train the AI on the company's writing style. "I feel like I dug my own grave," she said. "We were the ones who trained the artificial intelligence that replaced us."
Lisa is not her real name. She is one of several former outsourcing workers who spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity, fearing it could hurt their job prospects.
A major source of jobs
The Philippines built its outsourcing industry starting in the early 2000s. It was marketed as an English-speaking alternative to India for call centres, accounting, and other services.
Companies like Accenture, Concentrix, and Teleperformance built large offices across the country. Today the industry employs around 1.9 million people and generates $40bn a year, about 10% of the economy.
The International Labour Organization says 12.7 million Filipino workers, more than one in four, hold jobs exposed to generative AI. That is the highest share in South East Asia.
Jack Madrid, president of the IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines, said more than two thirds of member companies are already testing AI tools. He said many jobs are changing rather than disappearing.
Madrid said most affected workers have been moved into other roles within their companies. He also said a slowdown in hiring reflects weaker global demand, not just AI.
Pressure to cut costs
Mary, another former content writer whose name was changed, said her employer pushed staff to use AI as a productivity tool. She said it created more work instead of less.
"We had to edit more, fact-check more because the data AI produced was inaccurate," she said. She was later made redundant too.
Teleperformance has said it expects AI to handle routine tasks while staff move into harder roles. The company has said it plans to retrain workers.
Accenture has said AI will change almost every job rather than remove them, and has pledged billions of dollars for training. Concentrix has said its AI systems will stay under human oversight.
Paul Quintos of the University of the Philippines-Diliman said some Filipino managers want to slow AI adoption. He said foreign clients are pushing companies to adopt it faster to cut costs.
Quintos also pointed to something he called "AI washing." He said some layoffs get blamed on AI when the real reason is weak demand or a slowing economy.
Labor groups told the BBC that current employment laws cover redundancy but say little about how firms should introduce AI or consult staff. The outsourcing sector in the Philippines has no unions, limiting worker input.
Leandro Aguirre of the Philippines' Department of Information and Communications Technology said the country is behind rivals like India and Singapore. He said the government has committed to retraining more than 300,000 outsourcing workers.
Aguirre said the country needs to build local AI companies rather than rely only on foreign investment. "The benefits of AI have to trickle down to people," he said. "It can't just benefit employers."
