THE Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) said Tuesday that the country’s modernized Unified 911 system can now detect and block artificial intelligence (AI)-generated and automated prank calls to improve response time for legitimate emergencies. The upgraded capability enables emergency operators to focus on real distress calls by filtering out suspicious communications, including robo-dialed and AI-generated reports that could disrupt operations, it said. “Reports regarding AI-generated calls have reached us. With our modernized Unified 911 system, we can filter these robocalls and fake communications,” Emergency 911 National Office Executive Director Francis Fajardo said during the DILG Kapihan on Tuesday. Fajardo said that the system can validate whether a call is likely AI-generated, allowing operators to detect and manage suspicious activity. Data from the National Call Center showed that prank and abandoned calls declined by 98.3 percent since the system’s rollout in September 2025. However, the DILG noted that non-emergency and suspicious calls continue to consume valuable system capacity and may still delay assistance to callers in genuine distress. The department warned that prank and automated calls can congest emergency lines and slow response to critical incidents such as accidents, crimes, fires and medical emergencies. To address this, the system now tracks phone numbers that repeatedly make suspicious or non-emergency calls. Numbers exhibiting patterns of prank reporting are automatically assigned lower priority, ensuring that verified emergency calls are handled first. Fajardo urged the public to use the 911 hotline responsibly, warning that unnecessary calls could delay assistance for those in life-threatening situations. The DILG reiterated that Unified 911 is strictly for emergencies and asked the public to help safeguard the system’s efficiency by avoiding non-essential use so that responders can reach those in danger without delay.