A recent study by Deloitte Asia-Pacific estimated that AI (Artificial Intelligence) usage is integrated into more than 11 billion productivity hours per week across the Asia-Pacific region. The rapid adoption of generative AI models globally and in Southeast Asia, particularly, is shifting where people source information. Generative AI models like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity AI are increasingly relied on to frame critical social and political issues. Despite considerable growth in the use of generative AI, minimal scholarly research is available documenting how generative AI frames vital social and political debates like the right to self-determination. The legitimacy of self-determination demands and their impact on peacebuilding and geoeconomic development is an ongoing debate in several Southeast Asian countries, with the conflicts in Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Myanmar being just a few examples. This study utilizes a mixed-methods critical political economy approach, informed by reflexive positionality and postcolonial analysis, to analyze how three popular generative AI models, ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity AI, frame the debate over self-determination and its role in peacebuilding and geoeconomic development efforts in Southeast Asia. The AI models interviewed for this study framed self-determination as primarily a political issue with cultural, economic, and social sub-elements. Taking a back seat to political factors, cultural and economic sub-themes dominate the discussed causes of self-determination demands, while social factors bring the most legitimacy and popular remedies to the problem after political factors. Ultimately, the models’ framing narrated the ambiguity of self-determination as a right and international standard.