Prosecutors showed an AI picture of P125 million in cash. The defense objected.
House prosecutors used an AI-generated image at Monday's impeachment trial to show what P125 million looks like. The defense said nobody can check whether the picture is accurate.
An image made by artificial intelligence turned up in the country's most watched courtroom on Monday, August 17. House prosecution counsel Amando Virgil Ligutan showed a computer-generated picture of P125 million in cash while questioning Gina Acosta, the former Office of the Vice President staff member who handled confidential funds, before the Senate impeachment court.
Ligutan used the picture to ask Acosta whether that was what P125 million looked like. Defense counsel Lindon Miguel Bacquel asked straight away whether the image was AI-generated. Ligutan said it was. He explained the prosecution turned to the technology because they do not have P125 million in cold cash to bring to court.
The defense objected. Speaking to reporters afterwards, defense spokesperson and counsel Michael Poa said the objection was about one thing: whether a picture drawn by software can be trusted to show the real thing.
Because we cannot determine the accuracy of what P125 million really looks like. And to be honest, personally, I have not seen P125 million in person. So that was really our concern, the matter of accurate depiction.
Why it matters
A photograph is a record of something that existed in front of a camera. An AI image is not. It is a guess assembled by software from patterns it learned elsewhere, which means the pile of money on the screen was never counted, weighed or photographed by anyone. That is a new kind of picture for a Philippine court to look at, and this is the highest-profile place it has shown up so far. Whatever gets settled here about labeling and basis will shape what lawyers can put on a screen in ordinary cases too.
The catch to watch
This was a visual aid, not proof of the money itself, and both sides were open about where it came from. The prosecution said yes the moment it was asked, and Poa said the defense understood why the prosecution did it, since the point was to help the court and the public picture the amount. Poa said they mainly wanted their objection on the record. The open question is the one nobody has answered yet: what a Philippine court will require before an AI-made image goes on the screen, and how a judge or a viewer at home is supposed to tell one from a photo.