By Roberts Ernests Levics, Founder of Spotwise.
Public trust is no longer something governments or institutions receive automatically. It must be earned—not through slogans, polished press conferences or assurances that everything is under control, but through verifiable facts, open data and the ability for citizens to see for themselves how public life actually functions.
In modern democracies, trust has always depended on accountability. What has changed in the digital age is that accountability is becoming measurable. Yet discussions about artificial intelligence continue to focus almost exclusively on its risks: disinformation, deepfakes, election interference and the disruption of labour markets. These concerns deserve serious attention. However, they often overshadow another important aspect of AI—its potential to make democratic processes more transparent, more accountable and ultimately more trustworthy.
When discussing AI in politics, it is essential to distinguish between two fundamentally different applications.
The first is AI as a creator of political content. Today’s generative AI systems can produce highly convincing synthetic videos, cloned voices and manipulated images capable of portraying politicians saying or doing things that never happened. This is the application that has understandably attracted the greatest regulatory attention. From 2 August 2026, Article 50 of the European Union’s AI Act requires manipulated politically significant content to be clearly labelled as AI-generated, regardless of whether there was an intention to deceive. Failure to comply may result in fines of up to €15 million or 3% of a company’s worldwide annual turnover. Across the Atlantic, more than thirty U.S. states have introduced legislation requiring disclosures on AI-generated election advertising, although the Federal Election Commission has yet to establish common federal rules.
There is, however, another face of artificial intelligence that receives far less attention. Instead of generating political messages, AI can monitor them. Rather than creating campaign advertisements, it can identify, classify and analyse them, providing citizens with a clearer picture of who is advertising, where those advertisements appear, how frequently they are broadcast and, increasingly, how much money is likely being spent. While regulators around the world are debating how to identify AI-generated content, relatively little attention has been given to using AI itself as a tool for democratic oversight.
This represents a significant missed opportunity. The world is gradually learning how to detect and label AI-generated manipulation. Yet very few countries have systematically explored how the same technology could help citizens monitor the political advertising market as a whole—not merely individual deepfakes, but the broader flow of political messaging and campaign spending.
The need for greater transparency is becoming increasingly apparent. According to the OECD’s 2024 survey, only 39% of respondents across 30 OECD countries expressed trust in their national government, while only 41% believed governments rely on the best available evidence when making decisions. Citizens today expect more than promises; they expect evidence. Trust is gradually shifting from political rhetoric towards demonstrable transparency.
The findings of the Edelman Trust Barometer point in a similar direction. Public confidence in artificial intelligence remains cautious, but people are considerably more willing to trust AI systems when they are transparent, understandable and demonstrably serve the public interest. The debate is therefore no longer about whether AI will become part of democratic governance. The more important question is how democracies choose to use it.
Several countries are already demonstrating how AI can strengthen public administration. Singapore has introduced AI tools to identify corruption risks, while Estonia continues integrating AI into digital public services. Yet one important field remains largely unexplored: comprehensive transparency of political advertising. There is a significant difference between labelling manipulated campaign material and providing society with a complete overview of political advertising activity. The latter remains largely absent, creating an opportunity for smaller democracies to become pioneers rather than followers.
Political advertising illustrates particularly well why transparency has historically been so difficult to achieve. During election campaigns, voters are exposed to enormous volumes of messaging across television, radio, online platforms and social media. Citizens have the right not only to know what political actors are saying, but also who is attempting to influence them, how frequently those messages are delivered and how much money is being invested to shape public opinion.
The European Union has already recognised this challenge through its Regulation on the transparency and targeting of political advertising, which introduces stronger disclosure requirements and publicly accessible repositories for online political advertisements. Nevertheless, legislation alone cannot deliver transparency. Rules establish obligations, but technology provides the practical means to verify compliance.
Radio broadcasting illustrates this particularly well. Monitoring every station around the clock through manual observation is simply unrealistic. Artificial intelligence makes continuous monitoring possible at a scale that would otherwise require hundreds of people. This is no longer a theoretical concept. In Latvia, Spotwise has recently launched a free public platform that allows anyone to follow political advertising on radio in real time throughout the election campaign. Citizens can see how many advertisements have aired, on which stations, in which languages and their estimated advertising value. Information that was previously available only through expensive commercial monitoring services is now accessible to every voter.
The broader implications extend well beyond political advertising. Similar technologies can improve transparency in public procurement, government communications, media monitoring, disinformation detection and the identification of potential conflicts of interest. For smaller countries, innovation can become a far more powerful competitive advantage than scale. While they may never match the resources of larger states, they can often become the first to implement smarter solutions.
None of this suggests that artificial intelligence should replace journalists, regulators or democratic institutions. It should not. AI systems remain imperfect, and automated estimates will never substitute for investigative reporting or official oversight. Their value lies elsewhere: they allow society to observe more, detect patterns earlier and ask better questions. They strengthen human oversight rather than replace it.
Rejecting artificial intelligence because it is imperfect would be like rejecting statistical data because it occasionally contains errors. Democracies have never depended on perfect information. They depend on making information more accessible, more transparent and more open to public scrutiny. Imperfect but publicly available information is almost always preferable to complete opacity.
Artificial intelligence will undoubtedly transform democratic politics in the years ahead. Whether it becomes a tool for manipulation or a tool for accountability will depend not on the technology itself, but on the choices democratic societies make today.
