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Seven cities, station forecourts, adult education centers, churches, schools, markets of possibilities – and plenty of conversations about politics. Over the past few days, we, representatives of accredited adult education and the IdemKI team, have been traveling through Saxony-Anhalt with Landtagswahl.ai. Our experience just before the state election: sometimes you don't need another panel discussion, just an image that makes people stop and look.
What happens when you don't summarize a party platform, but instead try to turn it into a picture of the future?
We traveled through Saxony-Anhalt with this question ahead of the state election on September 6th. In our luggage: our AI-generated visualizations of the party platforms of the AfD, BSW, CDU, FDP, Greens, The Left, and the SPD.
Not as a voting recommendation. Not as a forecast. But as a rather unusual way to start a conversation. And there was plenty of conversation.
Salzwedel: The Tour Kick-off
It started on August 26th in Salzwedel. At the district adult education center, the exhibition and the conversation met head-on: visitors were able to view the AI-generated images of the future and then discuss party platforms, democracy, and, of course, the question of what artificial intelligence can actually achieve in such a translation – and what it cannot – with representatives from IdemKI and us. Because that is exactly where an exciting part of the project lies: a party platform consists of language, arguments, demands, and political priorities. An image works in a completely different way. It condenses, omits, interprets – and in doing so, sometimes provokes entirely new questions.
Magdeburg: What does AI see when it "sees" politics?
A day later, we continued to Magdeburg. On August 27th we were guests at schools and the municipal adult education center. Once again, it wasn't just the images themselves that were the focus. The real question was: what happens to political content when it undergoes a media shift from text to image? Which aspects immediately catch the eye? Which remain invisible? And how strongly does visual language influence our perception of a political idea? Here, too, it became clear: the AI images work particularly well where they are not viewed as a definitive answer, but as an invitation to take a closer look.
Merseburg, Ermsleben, and Lutherstadt Wittenberg: Stepping out of the gallery
On August 28th our tour split up: while one part of the team headed to Merseburg, the other traveled to Lutherstadt Wittenberg and Ermsleben (part of the town of Falkenstein/Harz). In Wittenberg, the "Inclusive Voting" project was presented at the Augustinuswerk e.V. Here, too, AI-generated images take center stage—with a special focus on accessibility: complex political content is visually adapted to make it easier to understand, especially for people with disabilities. The core focus is on how political decisions concretely impact their daily lives and quality of life. In the run-up to the state election, the resulting visualizations are part of the traveling exhibition "Inclusive Voting – Be Part of It!" and are intended to promote political opinion-forming, democratic exchange, and social participation. In the St. Sixtus Church in Ermsleben a moderated evening event for the exhibition took place on August 28th at 5 p.m. as part of the men's group meeting. Meanwhile, things became much more public at the station square in Merseburg. Between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m., the exhibition turned into an open-air event. No gallery, no seminar room, no classic political evening event: the images were placed right in the middle of a public space—where people arrive, transfer, walk by, or are actually busy with other things. And that was exactly what made it exciting. Because someone who happens to stumble upon one of seven large AI images depicting potential political visions for the future of Saxony-Anhalt reacts differently than someone who intentionally attends an information event. People stop. They look. They wonder. And that is usually exactly how a political conversation began. The evening continued in Merseburg: at the community center of the St. Maximi Church the images could be viewed and discussed once more in a different setting.
Wernigerode in the morning, Halberstadt in the afternoon: Right in the heart of civil society
On August 29th , our tour took us to two locations in the Harz region – and firmly out of traditional exhibition spaces. In the morning, we set up our seven AI-generated visions of the future at Nicolaiplatz in Wernigerode . Right in the middle of town, the large-format images became a real eye-catcher and a conversation starter: people stopped, took a closer look, and began discussing with us how these very different images of a potential future for Saxony-Anhalt were created from the parties' election manifestos. In the afternoon, we continued on to Halberstadt. At the cathedral square , we took part in the "Market of Possibilities" following the "Osten United" demonstration . Here, Landtagswahl.ai met with numerous initiatives and engaged citizens – an environment where social and political issues were already being discussed directly and openly. These two stops were particularly exciting for our tour: within just a few hours, the same seven images were displayed in two different cities, encountering a wide variety of people. Sometimes passersby happened upon us by chance, while at other times we met people who were intentionally participating in a political and civil society event. Yet, in both locations, the images consistently sparked the same question: What should the future of Saxony-Anhalt look like?
A Market of Possibilities after the "Osten United" demo
The fact that the images are now generating significant interest outside of the actual exhibition was evident at the Market of Possibilities following the "Osten United" demo. The Landtagswahl.ai booth brought many interested people together for conversation. Many wanted to know more about how the motifs were created, the different levels on which they can be interpreted, and where the limitations of artificial intelligence lie. Top candidate Suse Sziborra-Seidlitz also visited the booth and engaged in conversation with other attendees. It became clear that the AI images do not function as ready-made answers, but rather as a starting point for questions and discussions about political platforms, visions for the future of society, and the possibilities and limitations of generative AI. It is precisely these encounters that show what has happened over the past few weeks: an experiment in which election manifestos are visualized by generative AI has turned into images that are finding their way into public discourse.
The real tour takes place in our minds
Landtagswahl.ai explicitly does not view these visualizations as forecasts or voting recommendations. The images do not show what Saxony-Anhalt will actually look like after the election. They are artistic translations of political manifestos—a condensed and interpretive conversion of text into image, taking into account the possibilities and limitations of generative AI. That is exactly why all the images belong together. Anyone standing in front of them is encouraged to compare. To disagree. To ask questions. Perhaps to laugh. Perhaps to be unsettled. And, ideally, to want to find out what is actually written in the respective election manifesto afterward. After weeks of planning and an interesting journey between schools, adult education centers, churches, educational institutions, and public squares, the Saxony-Anhalt tour is coming to an end as the state heads toward the state election on September 6, 2026. What remains is more than just AI-generated images. Above all, it is the conversations that took place in front of them.
Perhaps that is the most rewarding experience of this journey: civic education does not always require a place where everyone already knows they are about to talk about politics. Sometimes an image—and the question it triggers—is enough.
Because democracy does not begin with a perfect picture of the future. It begins with us talking to one another about what that future should look like.
Lifelong learning applies to us, too: That is why we use artificial intelligence as a tool to create our texts and images. However, all content is selected, reviewed, and verified by our staff.
