Japanese political party to install AI leader

Wednesday, September 17, 2025 - A Japanese political party has said that it will install an artificial intelligence as leader after its founder, Shinji Ishimaru (pictured above), quit following a disastrous showing in recent elections. 

"The new leader will be AI," Koki Okumura, a doctoral student of AI research who described himself as an assistant to the new leader, told a news conference on Tuesday, September 16. 

Details about the AI are yet to be decided, including when and how it will be implemented, said the 25-year-old student at Kyoto University, who will nominally be the party's leader. 

The AI will not dictate political activities of party members but will focus on decisions such as distribution of its resources among members, for example, said Okumura, who recently won a party contest to succeed Ishimaru. 

The Path to Rebirth party, which was launched in January by Shinji Ishimaru, a former mayor of a small city in western Japan, does not have a policy platform and its members are free to set their own agendas. 

Ishimaru unexpectedly came second in the 2024 Tokyo gubernatorial election thanks to a successful online campaign, but he quit the party after it failed to pick up any seats in this year's upper house elections. 

While attracting media attention, the Path to Rebirth has struggled to win seats. 

All of its 42 candidates lost in the June Tokyo assembly election. All of its 10 candidates who ran in the upper house election in July also lost. 

The report that the Japanese political party is to install and AI leader comes after Albania became the world’s first government to appoint an AI minister to fight widespread corruption. 

Albania has introduced Diella, the world’s first government minister created by artificial intelligence. 

Dressed in traditional Albanian attire and named after the Albanian word for “sun,” the AI-generated bot will oversee public tenders by managing and awarding government contracts. 

She will help make Albania "a country where public tenders are 100% free of corruption," said Prime Minister Edi Rama during a speech unveiling his new cabinet on September 11.