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Factchequeado’s Commitment to Action, AI Sin Fronteras: Protecting Democracy in Spanish, developed in collaboration with Chequeado and Fundación Maldita.es, was presented at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting. An audience of global leaders heard about the challenges artificial intelligence poses to non-English-speaking communities and their implications for democratic participation, particularly for Latino communities in the United States.
The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) brings together leaders from government, business, philanthropy, and civil society to turn ideas into concrete commitments addressing major global challenges. Since its launch in 2005, its model has centered on Commitments to Action: new, specific, and measurable projects designed to translate collaboration into tangible results.
On 2026 CGI, Laura Zommer, CEO and co-founder of Factchequeado, presented a question that is becoming increasingly urgent as artificial intelligence becomes embedded in how people seek and receive information: Who gets heard —and who feels safe participating in public life— in the age of AI?
For Spanish-speaking communities, that question is already producing concrete consequences.
Imagine asking an AI system when you are supposed to vote in the November midterm elections and receiving the wrong date simply because you asked the question in Spanish. Or imagine being a Latina candidate facing a new generation of political attacks because generative AI has made manipulated content cheaper, faster, and easier to produce, and capable of spreading on an enormous scale.
These are no longer hypothetical risks.
Research conducted in 2026 by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (part of Factchequeado’s network of +150 partners) found that six leading AI chatbots performed 16% worse when answering basic questions about U.S. elections in Spanish than when answering the same questions in English. One model provided the incorrect date for the U.S. midterm elections twice. The initiative argues that such failures are not merely technical mistakes: when access to reliable civic information varies by language, the consequences can extend directly to people’s ability to participate in democratic life.
At the same time, 76% of Americans are “concerned that misleading audio or video ‘deepfakes’ created using AI will impact the 2026 midterm elections, according to a national survey conducted by UC San Diego’s Center for Transparent and Trusted Elections, which is also part of Factchequeado’s network of partners.
A cross-border infrastructure for democratic resilience
Through AI Sin Fronteras, Factchequeado and its co-founding organizations Chequeado from Argentina, and Fundación Maldita.es from Spain, are building a three-year, cross-border model to strengthen democratic resilience across the United States, Latin America, and Europe, covering 7 Spanish speaking countries across three continents.
The initiative will combine AI-system testing and accountability, detection and rapid response to synthetic political content, protection for groups disproportionately targeted by AI-enabled abuse, responsible AI adoption in newsrooms, and media and AI literacy for communities.
In the United States, Factchequeado plans to establish an AI Democracy Integrity Lab. The first of its kind in Spanish. Drawing on its network of more than 150 media and community partners, it will identify emerging narratives, monitor synthetic political content, conduct research, and coordinate Spanish-language verification, bringing together local knowledge on the impact of AI on the communities and high-level research and analysis.
It will also create a Latina Candidates Protection Program to document AI-enabled political and gender-based attacks, build a dataset on those threats, and provide training and rapid-response support to Latina political and civic actors.
Factchequeado will additionally support 50 local Spanish-language newsrooms in the United States, strengthening their capacity to use AI responsibly and will expand its AI literacy work through FactDesafIA, including an elections-focused component for Spanish-speaking communities.
Chequeado will extend the model across Latin America, supporting independent media organizations in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Paraguay in adopting AI responsibly, while also training educators and developing open Spanish-language resources for responsible AI use.
Fundación Maldita.es will deploy AI-supported monitoring and rapid-response systems in Spain and expand media and AI literacy programming for students, teachers, journalists, civil society organizations, and Latino communities.
Together, the three organizations will analyze threats that move across borders, publish comparative research and policy recommendations, and develop a model that can be replicated across Spanish-speaking information ecosystems.
“Artificial intelligence does not affect every community equally. When AI systems are less reliable in Spanish—and when local communities and newsrooms lack the resources to detect AI-driven manipulation or harness these tools for good—existing information inequalities do not just persist; they deepen.” said Laura Zommer, CEO and co-founder of Factchequeado. “AI Sin Fronteras is about making sure Spanish-speaking communities are not an afterthought in the development of the technologies increasingly shaping public life.”
The commitment is expected to run from September 2026 through September 2029. According to the proposal submitted to CGI, it aims to benefit millions through stronger local information ecosystems, verified content, research, educational resources, and the partner organizations’ distribution networks.
The selection of AI Sin Fronteras for presentation on CGI places an often overlooked dimension of the global AI debate at the center of an international forum: whether technological progress is advancing equally across languages, and what happens to democratic participation when it does not.
For Factchequeado, Chequeado, and Fundación Maldita.es, democratic resilience in the age of AI requires more than innovation. It requires radical collaboration, readiness, accountability, inclusion, and the capacity to mitigate harms that are already affecting who can access reliable information, participate in public life, and make their voice heard.
About Factchequeado
Factchequeado is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization working to close the information gap in Spanish for more than 68 million Latinos living in the United States. It expands access to verified and relevant information and strengthens the Spanish-language information ecosystem by fostering innovation, collaboration, and community-driven solutions.
About Chequeado
Chequeado is a non-profit, non-partisan organization based in Argentina that helps people make informed decisions by combining fact-checking, education, and civic technology to elevate the quality of public debate and contribute to strong democracies. Through its Media, Innovation, Education and Impact and New Initiatives programs, Chequeado promotes information integrity and critical thinking for active citizenship. The organization works to counter disinformation, increase transparency of public data, and develop innovative tools that improve access to reliable information.
About Fundación Maldita.es
Maldita.es is a non-profit foundation based in Spain that protects information integrity and builds public trust through journalism, education, technology, research, and policy advocacy. It has specialised teams, innovative technological tools and a broad community of citizens who collaborate with the organisation in the fight against disinformation. Its mission is to provide all relevant stakeholders with evidence and data-based tools, skills and content so they can make informed decisions and contribute to a more resilient, accessible and trustworthy information and media ecosystem.
About the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI)
Founded by President Bill Clinton in 2005, the Clinton Global Initiative is a community of doers representing a broad cross section of society and dedicated to the idea that we can accomplish more together than we can apart. Through CGI’s unique model, more than 13,000 organizations have launched more than 4,300 Commitments to Action — new, specific, and measurable projects and programs – that are making a difference in the lives of more than 500 million people in 180 countries.
