(Or alternatively, it's getting harder to stamp out "shadow IT" and all the risks and headaches it causes.)
In all aspects of the term, software is getting less democratized. But that is in line with a decades long trend, where computers used to ship with BASIC installed and now you need a specialized IDE tool which has a learning curve.
It used to be that you could dabble with HTML but now you need to learn a few javascript frameworks just to modify existing code. You used to start a piece of software by running it, modern server software is a fragile jigsaw that is delivered to production in the cloud. The list goes on. The future we are being promised is that you ask your paid-for development agent to make the necessary changes you require and deliver in to production in the cloud.
Which is fine, in a way, but it shifts power to the professionals. Just as Google, Apple or Microsoft owns your identity and your data, and you pay to use it, they can also decide to deny access for any reason. They are private companies, after all, and it is their data.
Building yourself a table using some new carbon fiber hammer isn't democracy. That's just consumerism.
The actual elites greatly extended their control over software development, that's the opposite of democracy
Access to compilers was almost as controlled as access to LLMs to prior to the GNU toolchain and Linux putting a C compiler and unix (ish) machine in the hands of anyone who cared for one.