TIRANA: Albania’s new AI-generated minister addressed parliament for the first time on Thursday, defending its role as “not here to replace people, but to help them”.

The world’s first AI government minister was appointed last week by Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama.

“Some have called me ‘unconstitutional’ because I am not a human being,” the AI — dubbed Diella, or “sun” in Albanian — told parliament in a video, appearing as a woman dressed in a traditional Albanian costume. It was unclear how the video was generated or the origin of the speech. “Let me remind you, the real danger to constitutions has never been the machines but the inhumane decisions of those in power,” the bot said.

Last week Rama said the AI would be entrusted with all decisions on public tenders, making them “100 per cent corruption-free and every public fund submitted to the tender procedure will be perfectly transparent”.

Diella was launched in January as an AI-powered virtual assistant to help people use the official e-Albania platform, which provides documents and services. Albania ranks 80th out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s corruption index.

The mayor of the capital Tirana, a former close associate of Rama, has been in pretrial detention for months on suspicion of corruption in the awarding of public contracts and money laundering.

Published in Dawn, September 19th, 2025