AI in Filipino Cinema: Home Along Da Riles, The Reunion
A reflection on watching Home Along Da Riles: The Reunion and encountering an AI-recreated performance of a late Filipino comedy icon on screen.
AI in Filipino Cinema: Home Along da Riles: the reunion
Today is June 21st, 2026. As of writing, today is Father's day. Lots of families celebrate this day to honor all the fathers and father-figures of all the sacrifices they made for their family. Yesterday, June 20th, together with my wife's family, we watched Home along da riles: the reunion. It's the Nth iteration of Home along da riles.
Honestly I haven't watched the first iterations of these movie, but when I heard that this was one of Dolphie's best work, I was intrigued. For those who don't know him, Doplhie (insert real name) was one of the famous comedians in Filipino cinema / TV history. He's famous for his family-friendly and non-family friendly jokes. I remember being born to this world and people the same age as my dad kept mentioning his name.
Anyway, we got there, watch the movie, and before the climax of the movie, it was teased several times that the late wife of Dolphie, her character name was X, was seeing images of him as he passed away in-movie as well as in life. Now, before I even saw his face, I had a hunch that the producers of the movie will use AI to create a scene where Dolphie's face is shown but using AI to recreate the scene.
And my hunch was correct! at the later part of the movie, where the family got to reflect on their recent actions, behavior, and reconcilled with their widowed mom, the movie showed an AI-ified (I'm coining the term AI-fication and AI-ify) face of Doplhie. The quality does not differ much from the AI-generated content you see around social media, but I appreciate the effort nonetheless. And I think that's a good niche AI generated images and videos will have a space in.
I was smiling as I saw that scene, not because of the emotional weight of the scene but rather the future use of AI. Outside of tech space, there are real use cases of AI. Other spaces like robotics already have good AI players, like Physical Intelligence (PI).
I'm excited for a future that uses AI ethically like this movie. Keep it up Philippines.