The question of how political bots impact freedom of expression and information, and conversely, how these rights apply to political bots themselves remain a contested issue. This is because political bots are used to drive engagement metrics to other bots, in particularly political bots. They are commonly used in artificial intelligence (AI) embedded systems. Today, Twitterbots are perhaps the most well-known type of political bot including bots on Telegram, Facebook Messenger, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp and Instagram, and have been used for their impact on political elections. The threat posed by political bots has been identified in many cases, such as the 2016 US election and the 2016 BREXIT referendum. But, this threat has also observed in democratic processes across Europe, including in France and Germany in 2017, in Sweden in 2022, and in Croatia in 2024. Such bots have been employed to effectively execute various organised activities, ranging from disinformation campaigns and candidate discrediting to the generation of echo chambers on platforms and the impairment of access to accurate information. Across various disciplines, including media studies, political communication, sociology and political science, the effects of political bots on elections have been studied; however, this effect has not been proven certain. Nevertheless, the reaction of the European Union (EU) currently relies on two main documents: the European Union Code of Practice on Disinformation and the AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689). This PhD project asks two main research questions: (1) How are political bots used as a tool for manipulation in political elections in Europe? (2) How could the European Union’s AI Act regulate the use of political bots as tools for manipulation without interfering with pluralism and freedom of expression and information? Therefore, this research aims to present a detailed socio-legal analysis of the potential influence of the EU’s AI Act on political bots from the perspective of freedom of expression and information (as articulated in Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union). Additionally, the research relies on Habermas’s public sphere theory. Thus, a socio-legal research methodology and qualitative research methodology are used for a ‘law in context’ analysis, and semi-structured interviews have been conducted with experts from a range of disciplines.