DMK deploys AI portal to crowdsource 2026 election manifesto

DMK’s decision to use an AI portal to crowdsource its 2026 manifesto is a small but telling datapoint in how generative and classification tools are creeping into democratic processes. Rather than just being a back-office analytics tool, AI here becomes part of how a major regional party in India structures public input, deciding which concerns get grouped, amplified, or potentially sidelined. That shifts AI from being a neutral productivity enhancer to a gatekeeper in political agenda-setting.

While the system described is relatively simple—collect suggestions online, then use AI to cluster them—the symbolism matters. It normalizes AI as an intermediary between citizens and politicians in one of the world’s largest democracies. If this experiment works, you can easily imagine national parties, governments, and civil-society groups adopting similar pipelines. That doesn’t change near-term model capabilities, but it does deepen AI’s institutional footprint: future fights over dataset bias, transparency, and procedural fairness will increasingly play out in electoral contexts, not just in content moderation or advertising.