Untangling AI's Impact on Elections at the Athens Democracy Forum

Our Executive Director Carlos Luca de Tena spoke about AI’s impact on elections at the Athens Democracy Forum, alongside Ginny Badanes (General Manager of Microsoft's Democracy Forward initiative), Vivian Schiller (Executive Director of The Aspen Institute) and Farah Nayeri (culture writer at The New York Times) .

Carlos also published an op-ed on the promise and peril of AI ("AI: A Double-Edged Sword") in Ekathimerini, one of Greece's newspapers of record.

On his remarks at the Forum, Carlos touched upon the three following key points:

1️⃣ The rapid evolution of AI has heightened concerns about disinformation and deepfakes in elections worldwide. Research shows that AI’s direct impact on specific election results remains limited – it is accelerating influence and disinformation efforts rather than revolutionizing them.

2️⃣ That said, these emerging threats pose a risk to the broader democratic system, contributing to a more polarized information environment and fueling online harassment, particularly against deepfake targets.

3️⃣ Despite these challenges, AI also presents opportunities to strengthen our democracies: enhancing citizen participation, empowering individuals to express their opinions and allowing them to contribute to the lawmaking process.

The recording of the full panel discussion is available here.

You can find a summary of the Forum discussions on The New York Times here and on Ekathimerini here.

We are grateful to The Democracy and Culture Foundation for putting together a brilliant gathering of thinkers and doers working to advance democracy, and for inviting us to take part in it.

Our AI4Democracy initiative seeks to harness AI to defend and strengthen democracy through coalition-building, advocacy and intellectual leadership. Learn more about it here.