Within the spring of 2025, the CEO of a European childcare startup posted a quick write-up in regards to the qualities of a great chief on their LinkedIn web page. Dozens of executives responded with feedback like “Fantastically stated,” “Management isn’t about titles. It’s about kindness,” and “Management is about motion, affect, and integrity, not titles.”

LinkedIn is peppered with posts like these. However on this case, not one of the executives had been personally concerned with the trade. The posts and feedback had been produced by digital assistants primarily based within the Philippines, utilizing generative synthetic intelligence instruments.

Remainder of World spoke to 6 Filipino digital assistants and two companies who described a singular trade of low-paid and AI-assisted offshore staff producing content material for executives and so-called thought leaders on LinkedIn. The names of the digital assistants have been modified to guard their jobs. A LinkedIn consultant informed Remainder of World the platform was trying to crack down on this type of conduct.

As a rustic with the third-largest English-speaking inhabitants, the Philippines is already well-known for being an offshore labor hub. The virtual-assistant trade emerged within the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, as American and European companies sought cheap methods to offshore administrative work. A 2025 report by Future Markets Perception, an India-based market analysis and consulting agency, tasks that the marketplace for AI-assisted digital assistants is predicted to develop by 182% within the subsequent decade from its present $19.5 billion valuation.

182% The market development anticipated for AI-assisted digital assistants over the subsequent decade.

Mark Graham, professor of web geography on the Oxford Web Institute, informed Remainder of World Filipino digital assistants are positively on the middle of the trade, branching out from the nation’s name middle ecosystem right into a broader vary of distant work. 

In 2022, the IT and Enterprise Course of Affiliation of the Philippines famous a rise within the trade workforce headed to distant setups. By July 2023, it stated that just about half of the staff at its 400 member firms had transitioned to distant roles. 

These digital assistants embody people like Renee, a 27-year-old from Rizal Province, who described her job as posting and commenting on LinkedIn on  behalf of a London-based strategic investor. Renee was supplied with a four-page immediate, written like a memo, with the investor’s biography, an inventory of her most essential considerations, and her favourite books.

Renee generated 30–40 feedback per day utilizing ChatGPT, prioritizing engagement with LinkedIn accounts that repeatedly garnered a excessive variety of likes and reposts.

Listings on job boards like Jobstreet and Certainly sometimes promote $4 to $7 an hour to do duties like bookkeeping, managing appointments, and social media advertising and marketing. Interviews carried out with Remainder of World counsel that an growing variety of digital assistants are requested to make use of generative AI to supply LinkedIn content material on behalf of executives by writing posts, and fascinating with different customers.

Alon Pearl is the CEO of VA Masters, an Israeli recruitment agency that operates within the Philippines as virtual-assistant company, and claims to have 500 shoppers based totally within the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Europe. The agency says it has positioned over 1,000 staff. LinkedIn content material technology and advertising and marketing is without doubt one of the most requested duties from shoppers within the e-commerce, actual property, fintech, and digital advertising and marketing sectors, Pearl informed Remainder of World. Their shoppers can save as much as 80% on labor prices by hiring offshore in comparison with native hires, he stated.

“A enterprise that couldn’t afford a full-time social media supervisor or content material strategist domestically can now run constant content material, [lead-generating] campaigns, and neighborhood engagement at a fraction of the price,” Pearl stated.

Nina, a digital assistant primarily based in Manila, informed Remainder of World she spent two years within the function with a advertising and marketing company referred to as Impaxs, which assigned her to work for an electrical automobile firm to generate LinkedIn content material for its executives. She stated she needed to mimic a way of authority on a topic she was unfamiliar with.

“I needed to learn up about electric-vehicle charging ports. I’d by no means even seen one in my life,” Nina stated.

In an announcement to Remainder of World, LinkedIn stated the platform is clamping down on “low high quality, automated or generic” content material. “Whereas AI can be utilized to beat the clean web page downside, our focus is on surfacing skilled conversations that assist individuals advance their careers,” the corporate stated, emphasizing that its algorithm prioritizes genuine conversations. In March, the platform rolled out an AI system to weed out “engagement bait.”

The digital assistants who spoke to Remainder of World stated that model and persona promotion via repetitive posting is central to their every day duties.

Alex, primarily based in Quezon Metropolis, used to work at a name middle however had a tough time coping with the graveyard shift. They discovered a extra schedule-friendly digital assistant job via onlinejobs.ph, producing LinkedIn content material. For 4 hours a day, Alex collaborated with their consumer to get acquainted with their tone, voice, and the specified idea for his or her model. They used Canva to supply LinkedIn carousel posts.   

“The secret is every day posting — that’s the way you get forward of the algorithm on LinkedIn,” Alex informed Remainder of World.

Digital assistants typically use AI instruments paid for by their shoppers to hurry up the manufacturing of posts, feedback, and pictures.

Robin, a 39-year-old digital assistant primarily based in Manila who has labored for seven companies, stated “Gemini is healthier at analysis however ChatGPT sounds extra like a human.” Robin feeds prompts like, “create an overview for a high-performing weblog submit on the subject (insert subject),” and “ensure that the construction is attention-grabbing, partaking and covers totally different angles of the subject that serves our consumer’s model” into ChatGPT, then ports over the language to LinkedIn.

Alex and their community of about 20 different digital assistants additionally collaborate to make sure engagement with every others’ shoppers. In a WhatsApp group chat, members notify each other about their new posts, prompting the others to make use of their accounts to touch upon them, Alex stated. The sheer quantity of engagement results in apparent errors. One assistant thoughtlessly commented “Large win” on a submit commemorating the September 11 assaults.

Alex and Robin shared a number of tell-tale indicators {that a} LinkedIn thought chief’s account is managed offshore: every day posting, a sudden surge in followers, and replies to each remark.

“It’s alienation on prime of alienation. What worth am I really making by throwing this rubbish into the world?” stated Robin.

Juan Gabriel Felix, a researcher at Sigla Analysis Heart, a gaggle finding out digital labor, in contrast the mass of “homogenizing” AI-generated content material on LinkedIn to the broader development of slop piling up on-line.

“Influencers and thought leaders stand to achieve from this follow the place a self-sustaining trade of people and bots generates an phantasm of engagement,” he informed Remainder of World. 

Ivan Gonzales, a recruiter within the Philippines for Worca, a global expertise and workforce company connecting Asia’s digital labor with American employers, predicts AI will swallow the virtual-assistant trade ultimately. He referred to as the work a “dead-end job.”

Right this moment, firms are “creating instruments to attenuate utilizing [virtual assistants],” Gonzales stated.  “That’s what lots of our shoppers are exploring.”

Alex stop their digital assistant job in late 2025, saying they couldn’t deal with the “mind-numbing” workload anymore. “It’s all AI feedback by pretend individuals answered with pretend replies by different pretend individuals,” Alex stated. “It’s so lifeless web, like none of that is actual.”