MANILA -- The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) on Tuesday said it had prohibited its personnel from uploading confidential information in sites that could compromise the country’s national security.  

This was the assurance of AFP during the meeting of the Commission on Appointments (CA) on the consideration of the ad interim appointment of 31 generals and flag officers of AFP.

Batangas 5th District Rep. Mario Mariño and Camarines Sur 2nd District Rep. Luis Raymund “Lray” Villafuerte asked the AFP about its actions on artificial intelligence considering that Deepseek, an AI-powered chatbot from China, has entered the market.

“What’s preventing that app in the phone from getting information in your phone? So that’s what Im saying. If you will study, Taiwan banned DeepSeek,” Villafuerte told AFP.

“For security considerations, just in case you decide to ban DeepSeek, wala naman loss to the country. But if we don’t consider, I’m not saying you ban it, but if you don’t consider, it might be a security risk,” he added.

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According to BGen. Constancio Espina II, Commander of the Communications Electronics and Information Systems Services of AFP, “The AFP is actually seriously considering these kinds of technologies especially that it can be used against us.”

“It is not just DeepSeek, but other technologies that we are using. We need to use it with caution and we need to not put in matters that will be detrimental to our national security. So in the Armed Forces, we are prohibiting our soldiers, our officers and men to use this technology to upload confidential information and matters of national security. This is prohibited,” Espina said.

Espina said the AFP considers cyberspace as the fourth domain of operation since 2013.

“We’ve been looking at cybersecurity since that time and there are units and offices that were created to look into this domain and we have already crafted doctrines to this effect on cyberspace operations,” Espina said.

Deputy Minority Leader Senator Risa Hontiveros praised the creation of the said doctrines.

“I-add po na just recently yung pag-create ng cyber command ng Armed Forces of the Philippines is also an indication that we are serious with this type of operation,” Espina said.