Four Ways AI Is Being Used to Strengthen Democracies Worldwide

This essay argues that despite risks, AI is already strengthening democracy by augmenting human efforts: in Japan, Team Mirai used an AI avatar and the Mirai Assembly app to engage constituents; in Brazil, courts deploy AI for case management while litigators leverage AI to increase filings; in Germany, AI voter guides like Wahlweise and Wahl.chat improve access to party positions but raise bias and hallucination concerns, prompting calls for rigorous evaluation; and in California, CalMatters’ Digital Democracy and AI Tip Sheets surface data-driven anomalies for journalists. The authors advocate for “public AI” built under democratic control, pointing to Switzerland’s open-source Apertus model as evidence that capable, transparent systems can be developed outside big tech to distribute rather than concentrate power.