Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 6) -- The Trade Department is sounding the alarm on the threat posed by artificial intelligence (AI) on hundreds of thousands of jobs in the country's $25-billion business process outsourcing (BPO) industry. "AI has presented itself more than just as a new technology, but as a threat to the current employees servicing the service export industry and the BPO, including the contact centers," the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) said in a statement Wednesday. It warned that AI can "potentially diminish 45 to 50 percent of the approximately 1.2 million Filipino employees of the BPO industry." Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez called on the academe, business, and technology sectors to step up the retraining in higher value-added skills of BPO employees. "Let us retool and reposition the nature of the current jobs in the industry," he said in the statement.