TITAN at Meet the Future of AI 2025: Supporting the European Democracy Shield

This year’s Meet the Future of AI conference on the 2nd December in Brussels brought together Europe’s leading voices in AI, media, democracy, and disinformation, united around a single theme: Support for the European Democracy Shield.

As a key Cluster project working at the intersection of AI and information integrity, TITAN was proud to co-organise the event, contribute to panel discussions, and demonstrate how Socratic AI can strengthen Europe’s democratic resilience.

Antonis Ramfos presenting TITAN (image courtesy of EURACTIV)

The Democracy Shield represents the EU’s most ambitious effort to protect democratic processes in the age of AI-driven manipulation, foreign interference and increasingly sophisticated disinformation tactics. The 2025 edition of the conference served as a platform to explore how research, policy, civil society and technology must work together to operationalise the Shield’s goals.

Opening Session: Strengthening Democracy Through AI Collaboration

The event opened with Krisztina Stump, Head of Unit at DG CNECT, who set the tone for the entire conference:

Safeguarding European democracy requires collaboration, transparency, and innovative AI tools designed with public trust at their core.

Her intervention emphasised why Europe needs not just regulation, but also practical, citizen-centred solutions such as those developed within the AI & Democracy Cluster. This message carried directly into Session 1, moderated by Paolo Cesarini (EDMO/EUI), which examined:

• The policy architecture of the European Democracy Shield

• How EU institutions are coordinating responses to information manipulation

• Why collaboration between regulators, broadcasters, fact-checkers, journalists and researchers is essential

  
  

Speakers from the European Commission, European Federation of Journalists, European Broadcasting Union, and AFP highlighted a central truth:

Democratic resilience depends on shared responsibility and cross-sector cooperation.

Session 2: Disinformation, Elections and the New Reality

The second session, moderated by Francesco Saverio Nucci (UNINETTUNO / TITAN), explored how disinformation now threatens European elections continuously, not only during campaign periods. Experts from AI4TRUST, Debunk.org, EURACTIV.ro, UMONS and the HDMO network underlined:

• AI-generated political content is already influencing information spaces

• Enforcement of existing EU rules remains inconsistent

• Some countries operate in a “post-advertising” political AI landscape

• Platforms’ commercial incentives often contradict democratic needs

• Citizens need trust, awareness and incentives — not just tools

Bad actors work every day. Democracies must do the same.

This perfectly encapsulates why the European Democracy Shield is necessary, and why research projects like TITAN play a vital role.

Session 3: AI Tools for Democracy

The final session showcased cutting-edge AI tools and methodologies from across Horizon Europe that directly contribute to the objectives of the European Democracy Shield.

Projects presented included:

• AI4TRUST (AI-powered detection & verification)

• TITAN (critical thinking & media literacy through Socratic AI)

• AI-CODE (trust-enhancing technologies)

• AI4Debunk (community debunking resources)

• PromptED (AI literacy for journalists)

• CERTH MAAM (media annotation tools)

• PROMPT (LLM-driven media ecosystem analysis)

• ELLIOT (multimodal AI & trustworthy AI frameworks)

  
  

Represented by Antonis Ramfos, TITAN presented how its:

• AI-powered Socratic Coach

• Critical Thinking Assessment

• Micro-learning resources (incl. EDUbox Critical Thinking)

• Dialogue-driven media literacy approach

  
  

...provide citizens, educators, and organisations with the cognitive tools needed to recognise manipulative narratives and misinformation tactics. TITAN’s contribution supports the Democracy Shield by focusing on skills, awareness and long-term resilience, not just detection or verification.

The Democracy Shield calls for stronger public resilience, better access to trustworthy information, media literacy at scale, and responsible AI innovation. TITAN directly supports these goals by: empowering citizens with reflective, critical thinking, providing educators with structured tools for teaching media literacy, offering multilingual, accessible, and scalable digital resources, and fostering participatory, human-centred AI design. TITAN’s mission - to cultivate a society capable of reasoning independently and spotting manipulation - is exactly what the European Democracy Shield requires.

Closing Reflections: Building the European Democracy Shield

The event closed with remarks from Peter Friess of the European Commission, who underlined the importance of continued cooperation across projects, sectors and member states:

Let’s continue what we started today — share practices, collaborate widely, and support each other’s work.

The message was clear: Europe’s democratic resilience depends on collective effort, and the Cluster projects, including TITAN, are central to that mission.