In the spring of 2025, the CEO of a European childcare startup posted a brief write-up about the qualities of a good leader on their LinkedIn page. Dozens of executives responded with comments like “Beautifully said,” “Leadership isn’t about titles. It’s about kindness,” and “Leadership is about action, influence, and integrity, not titles.”
LinkedIn is peppered with posts like these. But in this case, none of the executives were personally involved with the exchange. The posts and comments were produced by virtual assistants based in the Philippines, using generative artificial intelligence tools.
Rest of World spoke to six Filipino virtual assistants and two agencies who described a unique industry of low-paid and AI-assisted offshore workers producing content for executives and so-called thought leaders on LinkedIn. The names of the virtual assistants have been changed to protect their jobs. A LinkedIn representative told Rest of World the platform was attempting to crack down on this kind of behavior.
As a country with the third-largest English-speaking population, the Philippines is already well known for being an offshore labor hub. The virtual-assistant industry emerged in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, as American and European businesses sought inexpensive ways to offshore administrative work. A 2025 report by Future Markets Insight, an India-based market research and consulting firm, projects that the market for AI-assisted virtual assistants is expected to grow by 182% in the next decade from its current $19.5 billion valuation.
182% The market growth expected for AI-assisted virtual assistants over the next decade.
Mark Graham, professor of internet geography at the Oxford Internet Institute, told Rest of World Filipino virtual assistants are definitely at the center of the industry, branching out from the country’s call center ecosystem into a broader range of remote work.
In 2022, the IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines noted an increase in the industry workforce headed to remote setups. By July 2023, it said that nearly half of the employees at its 400 member companies had transitioned to remote roles.
These virtual assistants include individuals 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 provided with a four-page prompt, written like a memo, with the investor’s biography, a list of her most important concerns, and her favorite books.
Renee generated 30–40 comments per day using ChatGPT, prioritizing engagement with LinkedIn accounts that regularly garnered a high number of likes and reposts.
Listings on job boards like Jobstreet and Indeed typically advertise $4 to $7 an hour to do tasks like bookkeeping, managing appointments, and social media marketing. Interviews conducted with Rest of World suggest that an increasing number of virtual assistants are asked to use generative AI to produce LinkedIn content on behalf of executives by writing posts, and engaging with other users.
Alon Pearl is the CEO of VA Masters, an Israeli recruitment firm that operates in the Philippines as virtual-assistant agency, and claims to have 500 clients primarily based in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Europe. The firm says it has placed over 1,000 workers. LinkedIn content generation and marketing is one of the most requested tasks from clients in the e-commerce, real estate, fintech, and digital marketing sectors, Pearl told Rest of World. Their clients can save up to 80% on labor costs by hiring offshore compared to local hires, he said.
“A business that couldn’t afford a full-time social media manager or content strategist locally can now run consistent content, [lead-generating] campaigns, and community engagement at a fraction of the cost,” Pearl said.
Nina, a virtual assistant based in Manila, told Rest of World she spent two years in the role with a marketing agency called Impaxs, which assigned her to work for an electric vehicle company to generate LinkedIn content for its executives. She said she had to mimic a sense of authority on a subject she was unfamiliar with.
“I had to read up about electric-vehicle charging ports. I’d never even seen one in my life,” Nina said.
In a statement to Rest of World, LinkedIn said the platform is clamping down on “low quality, automated or generic” content. “While AI can be used to beat the blank page problem, our focus is on surfacing professional conversations that help people advance their careers,” the company said, emphasizing that its algorithm prioritizes authentic conversations. In March, the platform rolled out an AI system to weed out “engagement bait.”
The virtual assistants who spoke to Rest of World said that brand and personality promotion through repetitive posting is central to their daily responsibilities.
Alex, based in Quezon City, used to work at a call center but had a hard time dealing with the graveyard shift. They found a more schedule-friendly virtual assistant job through onlinejobs.ph, generating LinkedIn content. For four hours a day, Alex collaborated with their client to get acquainted with their tone, voice, and the desired concept for their brand. They used Canva to produce LinkedIn carousel posts.
It’s all AI comments by fake people answered with fake replies by other fake people.”Alex, a virtual assistant
“The name of the game is daily posting — that’s how you get ahead of the algorithm on LinkedIn,” Alex told Rest of World.
Virtual assistants often use AI tools paid for by their clients to speed up the production of posts, comments, and images.
Robin, a 39-year-old virtual assistant based in Manila who has worked for seven agencies, said “Gemini is better at research but ChatGPT sounds more like a human.” Robin feeds prompts like, “create an outline for a high-performing blog post on the topic (insert topic),” and “make sure the structure is interesting, engaging and covers different angles of the topic that serves our client’s brand” into ChatGPT, then ports over the language to LinkedIn.
Alex and their network of about 20 other virtual assistants also collaborate to ensure engagement with each others’ clients. In a WhatsApp group chat, members notify one another about their new posts, prompting the others to use their accounts to comment on them, Alex said. The sheer volume of engagement leads to obvious mistakes. One assistant thoughtlessly commented “Huge win” on a post commemorating the September 11 attacks.
Alex and Robin shared several tell-tale signs that a LinkedIn thought leader’s account is managed offshore: daily posting, a sudden surge in followers, and replies to every comment.
“It’s alienation on top of alienation. What value am I actually making by throwing this garbage into the world?” said Robin.
Juan Gabriel Felix, a researcher at Sigla Research Center, a group studying digital labor, compared the mass of “homogenizing” AI-generated content on LinkedIn to the broader trend of slop piling up online.
“Influencers and thought leaders stand to gain from this practice where a self-sustaining industry of humans and bots generates an illusion of engagement,” he told Rest of World.
Ivan Gonzales, a recruiter in the Philippines for Worca, an international talent and workforce agency connecting Asia’s digital labor with American employers, predicts AI will swallow the virtual-assistant industry eventually. He called the work a “dead-end job.”
Today, companies are “developing tools to minimize using [virtual assistants],” Gonzales said. “That’s what many of our clients are exploring.”
Alex quit their virtual assistant job in late 2025, saying they couldn’t handle the “mind-numbing” workload anymore. “It’s all AI comments by fake people answered with fake replies by other fake people,” Alex said. “It’s so dead internet, like none of this is real.”