The outsourcing industry that helped lift millions of Filipinos into the middle classes now faces a challenge from the same technology its workers helped train, according to a BBC report. The country's outsourcing industry employs roughly 1.9 million people and generates $40bn (£30.1bn) in revenue each year, about 10% of the Philippine economy, and experts quoted by the BBC say it is disproportionately exposed to generative AI.
A 15-year career ended by the tool she helped train
Lisa, a single mother who worked in content writing for 15 years, told the BBC she was made redundant eight months into her latest role — one month before the position was due to become permanent. In the months before, she said, a public relations agency had been tasked with producing AI-generated material that she and colleagues were asked to edit; her skills were used to train the AI on the company's writing style. "I feel like I dug my own grave," she told the BBC. "We were the ones who trained the artificial intelligence that replaced us." Lisa, not her real name, is one of several former outsourcing employees who spoke to the BBC anonymously, having signed confidentiality agreements in return for severance pay and fearing that speaking out could hurt their chances in the industry's small network.
Industry scale and exposure
The Philippines has been promoted since the early 2000s as an English-speaking alternative to India for business process outsourcing (BPO), according to the BBC. In the Cubao district of Manila, streams of workers wearing company lanyards spill out of high-rise offices each evening, where multinationals run call centres, accounting, software development and marketing copy services for clients thousands of miles away. Successive governments offered tax incentives, invested in infrastructure, and encouraged multinationals to set up large operations. Global groups including Accenture, Concentrix and Teleperformance built sprawling campuses employing hundreds of thousands of Filipinos.
The exposure to AI is measurable. The International Labour Organization estimates that 12.7 million Filipinos — more than one in four workers — work in occupations exposed to generative AI, the highest share in South East Asia. The BBC reported that the organisation expects many roles to change rather than disappear, but the types of service jobs done in the Philippines leave it particularly at risk.
AI adoption: from pilots to 'agentic AI'
Adoption is already underway. Jack Madrid, president of the IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP), told the BBC that more than two-thirds of IBPAP's members are running AI pilots.
Agentic AI has the potential to automate at a much more accelerated pace. Obviously, there's a layer of jobs that are automatable or have been automated.
Madrid's comment points to the next stage of automation: "agentic AI" systems that do not just generate content but take actions. The BBC's interviews with workers suggest the transition is not abstract — in Lisa's case, the AI system was trained on the writing style of the very employees it then replaced.
Key figures in the BBC report
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Employees in Philippine outsourcing industry | Roughly 1.9 million |
| Annual revenue | $40bn (£30.1bn) |
| Share of Philippine economy | About 10% |
| Filipino workers exposed to generative AI (ILO estimate) | 12.7 million (more than one in four workers) |
| IBPAP members running AI pilots | More than two-thirds |
For technology leaders who source outsourcing capacity, the case of the Philippines is a practical example of how generative AI adoption affects a workforce that powered two decades of export-led services growth. The BBC report notes that the experiences of workers like Lisa offer an insight into a question confronting emerging economies: what happens when AI begins to automate the jobs that helped lift millions of people into the middle classes.
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