Brennan Center For Justice Series On Artificial Intelligence And Democ

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 6, 2025, 9:14 AM

brennan center for justice series on artificial intelligence and democ

Artificial intelligence is poised to bring great change to American democracy, from election management to voter outreach to political advertising and fundraising. AI can be used to improve elections, potentially making it easier to ensure fairness in electoral procedures and fostering a more inclusive and respectful civic discourse. At the same time, it poses significant risks: polluting the information environment with deepfakes and fake news sites, enhancing attacks on election officials and infrastructure, or suppressing Americans’ right to vote. As the Brennan Center works to identify the dangers and opportunities AI poses, we are detailing steps the public and private sectors should take to deal with the effects of AI on our elections... You can also learn more in our AI and Democracy series >> In their recent article published by the Brennan Center for Justice, CSET's Heather Frase and Mia Hoffman, along with Edgardo Cortés and Lawrence Norden from the Brennan Center, delve into the growing role of...

The piece explores the potential benefits and risks associated with deploying AI. CSET’s Heather Frase and Mia Hoffman, along with Brennan Center’s Edgardo Cortés and Lawrence Norden, published an article by the Brennan Center for Justice that discusses the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in... As AI tools become more accessible, government agencies and private companies are incorporating them into various functions to enhance productivity. The authors emphasizes that while AI offers opportunities to improve efficiency, election officials face challenges in determining the safe and effective integration of these technologies. Real-world harms caused by the use of AI technologies are widespread. Tracking and analyzing them improves our understanding of the variety of harms and the circumstances that lead to their occurrence once AI systems are… Read More

As policymakers decide how best to regulate AI, they first need to grasp the different types of harm that various AI applications might cause at the individual, national, and even societal levels. To better understand… Read More The Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute at New York University School of Law, has released a detailed report titled "An Agenda to Strengthen U.S. Democracy in the Age of AI". Published on February 13, 2025, the 39-page document, authored by Mekela Panditharatne, Lawrence Norden, Joanna Zdanys, Daniel I. Weiner, and Yasmin Abusaif, outlines strategies to harness artificial intelligence (AI) for democratic benefit while mitigating its risks.

Drawing from the 2024 election cycle—labeled the nation’s first “AI election”—the report offers recommendations for federal, state, and local policymakers. [Read More: Could a Hypothetical Deepfake Scandal on Election Eve Threaten Democracy?] The report examines AI’s impact during the 2024 U.S. elections, where generative AI, capable of creating text, images, audio, and video, saw varied use. Foreign entities employed it to amplify interference via fake news sites, campaigns crafted misleading deepfake ads, and activists used it to support voter suppression efforts. Candidates leveraged AI for outreach and content creation, while election officials tested it for voter communication.

Though fears of widespread disruption proved overstated—“the worst-case scenarios did not come to pass”, the authors note—the technology’s growing sophistication signals a need for proactive governance as its adoption is projected to peak later... [Read More: TikTok’s AI Algorithms Under Scrutiny for Election Interference in Romania] A key proposal is strengthening government capacity to manage AI. The report urges state and local governments to form advisory councils, citing models in Georgia and Utah, to assess risks and benefits. It also calls for funding to recruit AI experts—computer scientists, privacy officers, and more—to compete with private-sector opportunities. Training existing staff on AI use and cyber threats, like phishing, is recommended, alongside exploring efficiency gains, provided civil rights are safeguarded.

The Biden administration’s 2023 AI governance order, repealed by President Trump in January 2025, leaves states to take the lead, the report argues. Co-sponsored by the Brennan Center for Justice, this virtual event explored what we've learned about AI in the 2024 race — and what else we should look for in the weeks before (and after)... Since ChatGPT first launched nearly two years ago, many have claimed the rise of AI would pose a significant threat to elections. Reports warned that a surge of AI-generated disinformation could undermine democracy. Intelligence officials worried that foreign actors would use AI to disrupt the electoral process. Americans agreed, with more than half saying AI could impact who will win in November.

But have these threats actually materialized? So far, we haven't seen a deluge of deepfakes, and most are quickly spotted and debunked. Perhaps the warnings did their job. Election officials have worked vigorously to prepare for AI-related threats, and the media have reported extensively on the problem, priming Americans to be skeptical of what they see online. In this event, we convened experts from a variety of backgrounds — across government, civil society, academia, and media — to discuss what's happened with AI in the 2024 race, what we've learned from... Co-sponsored by NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics and the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law

Promises of the potential benefits of artificial intelligence are matched with growing anxiety about its risks to civil liberties and civil rights. The Brennan Center is tracking and analyzing regulatory frameworks, executive actions, and proposed bills that address AI, focusing on national security. AI tools rely on vast amounts of data for training and development, and the unchecked collection and use of our personal information to build these technologies threatens Americans’ privacy rights and free expression. Further, algorithms often encode existing societal bias against marginalized communities. We seek to promote privacy, free expression, and fairness as pillars of AI regulation. This risk is perhaps greatest with respect to law enforcement and intelligence agency use of AI, which can produce erroneous decisions about who to arrest, surveil, label a national security risk, and more.

The Brennan Center is working to ensure that these systems and their deployment are properly covered by regulatory efforts. https://www.brennancenter.org/series/ai-and-democracy An essay series from the Brennan Center and Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology examines the benefits and dangers of artificial intelligence for elections. Increasing awareness of the power of artificial intelligence coincides with growing public anxiety about the future of democracy, with significant concern about AI’s potential to harm elections. Recognizing that expertise in election administration and the societal impact of AI typically sit in different corners of the policy and academic worlds, the Brennan Center and Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging... This essay series explores how AI might impact areas including election security, the public comment process and participatory democracy, political advertising and fundraising, election administration, voter suppression, and the information environment for elections.

With an eye toward the 2024 election, the series will explore what steps the government, private, and nonprofit sectors should take to minimize the dangers and increase the impacts of these powerful new tools...

Brennan Center For Justice Series On Artificial Intelligence And Democ

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