Can AI strengthen democracy? A data collection on AI projects aiming to serve democratic processes

Artificial intelligence is often presented as a tool that could potentially strengthen democratic processes, but so far there is little empirical evidence either for or against these claims. Organizations proposing such AI tools are the first focus of the Impact AI project, a research project that is assessing the real-world impact of AI projects oriented towards public interest and sustainability. However, there are insufficient data collections that allow an overview of this new application field of AI. Thus, this article introduces a dataset displaying 98 AI projects that explicitly claim to serve democratic purposes. The dataset is intended as a resource for researchers seeking to empirically investigate these claims and assess their societal implications. The article outlines how the dataset was developed, what information it contains and how it can contribute to building evidence and transparency concerning the use of AI for democracy.