Albania Appoints AI-Generated “Minister” To Fight Corruption

On September 11, Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama announced the appointment of AI-bot “Diella” as a minister in charge of managing all government contracts with private institutions. According to Rama, Diella’s status as an AI bot will make it impervious to corruption.

Diella was originally unveiled earlier this year as an AI-powered virtual assistant made to help citizens and businesses get necessary public documents through the e-Albania platform. According to the country’s National Agency for Information Society, Diella uses all the latest AI models to ensure its accuracy.

The bot, whose name means “sun” in Albanian, is depicted as a woman dressed in traditional folk clothing.

“Diella, the first member not physically present but virtually created by AI in a government, will be supported by a special structure for the adoption of Artificial Intelligence in governing processes … and to strongly influence the pace of governance processes,” said Rama at assembly for the Socialist Party of Albania (PS), according to national news agency Agjencia Telegrafike Shqiptare (ATA).

The Albanian government argues that since Diella is a bot, it will be immune to bribery and corruption, something that the country has historically struggled with.

“It will be Diella who will serve public procurement … making Albania a country where public tenders are 100% incorruptible and where every fund that passes through the tender procedure is 100% transparent,” Rama continued.

So far, the government has provided no details regarding whether there will be human oversight of Diella’s actions or what form it would take.

Not everyone shares the Prime Minister’s enthusiasm regarding Diella. Some users on social media have called into question Diella’s capacity for fighting corruption in the country. Gazment Bardhi, leader of the parliamentary group of the Democratic Party of Albania (the PS’s main opponent in the country), called Diella’s status as a minister “unconstitutional.”

“Prime minister’s buffoonery cannot be turned into legal acts of the Albanian state,” Bardhi wrote on a Facebook post.

This isn’t the first official measure by Rama to spark national controversy. In December 2024, Albania’s prime minister banned TikTok for a year within the country after a series of videos hosted on the platform allegedly resulted in the fatal stabbing of a 14-year-old.