CLIENTS found AI cheaper than a freelance writer, and Ethel de Borja’s book projects dried up. After 15 years in IT, she shifted to remote work. Through The Urban Writers, she completed two 30,000-word titles a month for P35,000 each on personal finance, business and technology. “By May 2025, I no longer have bookwriting projects,” she said. “Claude was very popular for long prose.”
Her experience reflects a wider shift. Roughly 1.7 million Filipino gig workers were engaged through online platforms or mobile applications, according to PSA-linked analysis of the 2021 Labor Force Survey. The International Monetary Fund estimates that 14 percent of Philippine jobs are at risk of displacement by artificial intelligence (AI).
When clients stopped calling
Writing projects on Upwork declined 32 percent year over year in 2025, the steepest drop of any category, according to the Vollna Upwork Market Report.
Most Upwork jobs today, de Borja said, are for YouTube scriptwriters. Content writing for SMEs has largely disappeared. A single entry-level post now draws more than 50 applicants. Many employers post ads but never interview anyone.
“Platforms should be more transparent,” she said. “Because it’s a waste of time for us.”
The contraction has split what remains. Upwork’s 2025 In-Demand Skills Report showed AI data annotation and labeling up 220 percent, with generative AI modeling rates 22 percent above traditional AI work. For everyone else, tasks on Scale AI’s Remotasks paid $1 to $6 an hour without steady work.
Screened out twice
Corporate writing jobs brought a second AI barrier. JobStreet uses AI to assess suitability and shortlist applicants before hiring managers review them. Upwork runs Uma, its AI work agent. Indeed uses Smart Screening. Applications missing the right keywords may never reach an employer.
She feeds job ads to ChatGPT to generate cover letters and resumes. No responses followed. Halfway through a Tesda digital marketing course, she plans to take Google or Microsoft AI exams when she can afford the $100 fees. “I already know digital marketing. I’m just after the certification,” she said. “I believe AI is here to stay.”
For de Borja, whose cleft palate affects her speech, the screening goes further. Foreign clients on Upwork accommodated her. “When I tell them of my speech issues, they just say, ‘Ok, we talk through chat.’”
Local hiring tools left no such room. Through Indeed, she applied for a writing role that required a 90-second video. She sent a written transcript and disclosed her speech impairment. The employer, citing foreign supervisors, encouraged her to record a video so they could assess her, then hired someone else. Years earlier, she applied through JobStreet and disclosed her speech impairment. The employer replied that she would be part of an online team and did not pursue the interview.
De Borja has seen this play out before. “Bawal kasi (It is against the law),” she said. “There’s a Magna Carta for PWDs,” she added, referring to Republic Act 7277. “Hanap lang sila ng ibang reason (They just find another reason).” Algorithmic ranking is opaque enough that employers need not explain their decisions.
Platform that profited, then automated
For two decades, Upwork collected fees from every job Filipino freelancers won. In July 2025, it rolled out Uma to generate job posts, run interviews and draft proposals. On Jan. 5, 2026, it updated its terms to use eligible proposals, messages and platform data for AI training by default. Freelancers who never changed their settings remained opted in.
On May 7, 2026, CEO Hayden Brown cut roughly a quarter of the workforce. In an internal memo, he wrote that “AI means smaller, differently resourced teams in product and engineering can make a bigger impact than ever.” Fiverr cut 30 percent of its workforce in September 2025.
Her platform writing trains the AI systems that sort her applications. She knows about the practice and accepts it. “I’m okay with them using my info to train AI,” she said. “Mas important that I get jobs (More important that I get jobs).” The tradeoff has not paid off. JobStreet and Indeed never told her AI was screening her resume; she learned about it through Google and LinkedIn.
Accountability has a path. The National Privacy Commission’s 2024 advisory requires companies using AI to inform applicants when AI systems handle their data. Enforcement against JobStreet has not yet been tested. House Bills 13 and 658 propose formal AI governance frameworks. The AI Flourishing Act, a draft proposal from civil-society researchers that is not yet law, would shift the burden of proof to AI deployers when bias is alleged. Whether de Borja and other freelancers qualify remains unsettled. None of it would bring back the writing market.
Philippine law protects de Borja from being turned away because of her cleft palate. There is no equivalent protection for the income she lost to AI, or from the AI systems she helped train that screened her out before she could speak for herself.