Mary Ann Payuran from Zamboanga. Photographed by Chiara Negrello
Through a series of photographs entitled “Silent Shift,” Chiara Negrello captures the stories of Filipino women working in the AI industry.
In a room decorated with plushies and a poster of K-pop group Girls Generation, Paulyn Navia works from her home in Batangas, a laptop on her bed. She annotates data for training AI systems: tagging objects, identifying residential buildings on satellite images, categorizing consumer products like Cheetos and Lays for e-commerce applications, or marking vehicles for software used in self-driving cars. Born with an orthopedic disability, the work has given Navia a sense of purpose and belonging in her community. After years of struggle, becoming an AI data worker for Connected Women has been transformative. Now serving as a program trainer, she helps onboard other women while continuing to expand her own skills in the rapidly evolving field.
“I’ve discovered new strengths I never knew I had,” Navia says. “Now I feel deeply inspired to continuously evolve and grow and embrace my true worth and potential,” she tells Chiara Negrello, a young Italian photographer who spent several weeks with Navia and others like her in provincial areas around the Philippines. Negrello documented the women in their homes, delving into how their lives have been affected by this new industry. Before Negrello came to the Philippines, she worked on a project in Vietnam that showed how drones were transforming rice farming in the Mekong Delta, and she sought to continue exploring how technology has effected positive change, particularly for women.
“Living in Southeast Asia has truly shifted my perspective on how AI can impact lives here. [In the Philippines] Connected Women immediately stood out to me because the project offers an inspiring solution to the migration of women for work, showing how AI can offer a meaningful, ethical path that doesn’t require leaving home,” Negrello says. Silent Shift is the series of photographs that came out of her immersive homestays with the women, who all made her feel part of their lives. “I spent entire days with them, connecting not only with them but also with their families, who are an essential part of this story. It was a privilege to see how, through this job, they were not only transforming their own circumstances but also strengthening family bonds. I always believe that the most impactful stories come from real, everyday moments, and that’s exactly what I was trying to capture.”
In the mountains of Itogon, Benguet, where remote work or online jobs are scarce due to limited internet connectivity, Connected Women has created pathways for women like Novelyn Simon, who works out of her family’s multi-generational home. A sari-sari store owner, Simon had once considered migrating to Europe for work but chose to stay and be close to her family after finding a job as a data annotator through Connected Women. She reinvests her earnings in upgrading her devices, enabling her to move toward more complex operational work. In Itogon, Negrello experienced the malasakit nature of Filipinos when she got dengue and Cadio stayed with her in the hospital throughout her illness. “They welcomed me as a family member, and this was priceless,” Negrello says.
Connected Women is an organization that was born out of the realization that many women, regardless of their background, lack opportunities in the tech space. Founder Gina Romero describes how she was inspired by her own mother’s journey as a domestic worker in the UK and how it came full circle when Romero, while living in Singapore, hired a Filipino nanny for her own child and found out that the nanny hadn’t been home to see her own kids in eight years. “It just struck me that, why is this problem still happening decades after my mom left?” she asks. “Why, with all of the change, all of the opportunities in the world today, including opportunities that I myself managed to grasp having no formal education, why were these Filipino women still being left behind?”
Originally conceived as a job-matching platform for women, Romero found that the company could impact more people from underserved and marginalized segments by upskilling them to work as AI data annotation specialists. Negrello’s photographs capture the wide spectrum of Filipino experiences, reflecting the organization’s commitment to inclusivity. “These women are changing what an AI professional looks like,” Romero says. “Their stories send a powerful message, if they can build meaningful careers in AI despite significant obstacles, other women can, too.”
In Zamboanga, 60-year-old Mary Ann Payuran proves that age is not a barrier to entry to new technologies. Earlier, Payuran had a promising career with Philippine Airlines but chose to stop working to care for her son with autism. Over the years she often wondered what it would be like had she achieved her professional goals. “I have no regrets of spending those years taking care of my family. I believe it was one of my life’s missions and I think I did it with flying colors as I see my children’s accomplishments now,” Payura says. “However, I am also proud of myself that despite my old age, I still have the capacity to learn new skills.” As a data annotator, Payuran can work from home and still take care of her now-adult son.
An aspect of tech outsourcing that has faced criticism is its potential for exploitation, after investigations revealed that Filipino content moderators for social media companies endure grueling work conditions and suffer trauma from viewing an endless stream of violence, abuse, and hate speech. “We have certain principles that we focus on, like making sure that the women earn a fair wage and are not overloaded, and we do not accept any type of work that is detrimental to their health, like content moderation,” Romero explains. “The biggest challenge in ethical outsourcing is that people don’t know how AI is built, or even how AI works. A lot of people don’t understand the human component behind the AI.”
AI is built using millions of data sets, from images to text, that train algorithms to think and see like humans. Behind the magic of your Midjourney-generated art or ChatGPT-written essay is an unseen workforce of people who tag countless amounts of data, enabling the AI model to understand the meaning behind words and objects. Connected Women believes that the invisible hands that train these systems deserve visibility, recognition, and opportunity. Negrello’s photographs put a face to the women “who are shaping and have the potential to shape AI in the future,” as Romero says. “Women’s participation is essential not just for equality’s sake, but because diverse inputs create better, more comprehensive technological solutions.”
In Basilan, a province long isolated by its history of conflict and terrorism, Mayor Sitti Djalia Turabin Hataman has partnered with Connected Women to bring over 1,000 women in Isabela City into the digital economy. One of the program graduates, Nima Duma, used the income from data annotation to pay for her household bills. At the time of Negrello’s visit, she had paused working to take care of her ailing father. And though her electricity had been cut off, Duma had the peace of mind in knowing that her position remained available for whenever she could return. Another trainee, Jehada Aidarus, fled her home in Basilan to escape an abusive husband who prevented her from working or furthering her education. Aidarus sees her work in data annotation as a pathway to economic independence and the chance to reunite with her children.
Romero hopes that the Silent Shift exhibition changes the narrative around data annotation work, which is often seen as low-skilled and tedious, to show that it is also valuable and meaningful. Beyond individual empowerment, this shift carries the promise of mending the fabric of Filipino society by keeping families together and uplifting entire communities. “The vision is really to move up and beyond [annotation work]. We have that potential, because innovation and creativity are very much part of Filipino culture,” says Romero. “If we can harness AI to actually bring some of this innovation and creativity to solve the problems that we have, we can really accelerate the progress that we’ve all been dreaming of.”
The Silent Shift exhibit will open SM Supermalls’ “Women Inspiring Women Summit” on March 7, 2025, at the Samsung Hall in SM Aura, Taguig City. At 10:35 am, Chiara Negrello, Gina Romero, and Mayor Sitti Hataman will be on a panel discussing Women and AI.
