Azernews.Az

By Alimat Aliyeva

The Japanese political party Path to Rebirth has announced a bold and unconventional decision: artificial intelligence (AI) will serve as the party’s new leader, Azernews reports.

The announcement comes after Shinji Ishimaru, the party’s founder and former leader, stepped down following poor results in the July upper house elections. Ishimaru, who launched Path to Rebirth in January after serving as the mayor of Akitakata, a small town in western Japan, had hoped to bring a fresh vision to Japanese politics. However, the party failed to secure any seats in both the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly elections in June and the upper house elections in July.

One of the party’s distinguishing characteristics is its lack of a fixed political platform. Instead, members are free to create and promote their own individual policy agendas. In a recent internal party election, 25-year-old graduate student Koki Okumura was chosen to formally succeed Ishimaru as party leader — but with a twist: Okumura declared that the actual decision-making authority would be handed over to an AI system.

Okumura, who is currently studying artificial intelligence at university, explained that he would serve as an assistant to the AI “leader.” He clarified that the AI would not set the ideological direction of the party, nor make major political decisions, but would instead focus on operational tasks — such as optimizing the allocation of party resources and assisting with data-driven decision-making.

"The details are still being worked out," said Okumura. "We haven’t finalized the timeline or technical implementation yet, but our goal is to integrate AI into the party’s operations in a meaningful and transparent way."

This move makes Path to Rebirth the first known political party in Japan — and one of the first in the world — to officially name an AI system as its leader. While the concept may seem futuristic, it reflects a growing interest in the potential role of AI in governance, especially in a country like Japan, where technology is often seen as a key to solving social and political challenges, such as declining population and bureaucratic inefficiency.

Whether this experiment will help the party win votes or simply serve as a political statement remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: the Path to Rebirth is not afraid to rewrite the rules of leadership.