Albania’s AI-generated government minister, named Diella, has made global headlines after Prime Minister Edi Rama announced that the virtual official is “pregnant” and will soon “give birth” to 83 AI children, each of which will serve as digital assistants to members of parliament.
Rama revealed the development at the Berlin Global Dialogue conference, explaining that Diella’s “children” will be assigned to 83 MPs from the ruling Socialist Party to help them with administrative and legislative work.
“Each one will serve as an assistant for them, who will participate in parliamentary sessions and will keep a record of everything that happens and will suggest members of parliament,” Rama said. “These children will have the knowledge of their mother.”
He added jokingly that Diella’s “offspring” will help lawmakers until 2026, monitoring parliamentary activity and even updating MPs if they “go for coffee and forget to come back.”
Diella, whose name means “sun” in Albanian, was “born” in January 2025 as a virtual assistant on the government’s e-Albania web portal — similar to the UK’s GOV.UK platform. Developed by the National Agency for Information Society in partnership with Microsoft, Diella uses large language model technology to help citizens and businesses obtain government documents and answer public service queries.
A few months later, Diella 2.0 was launched with a voice interface and an animated avatar dressed in traditional Albanian attire.
Last month, the AI assistant was controversially promoted to the role of Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, overseeing government contracts with private tech companies — despite Article 100 of Albania’s Constitution requiring ministers to be natural persons. Rama defended the move, arguing that Diella’s incorruptibility made it ideal for tackling bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption:
“It’s hard to bribe or threaten an AI — except by switching it off,” he said.
In a recorded address to parliament, Diella’s avatar declared: “I’m not here to replace people, but to help them.”
However, the appointment sparked backlash from opposition MPs, some of whom protested during the video presentation, questioning the legality and ethics of appointing an AI to a ministerial position.
Experts have called Diella’s case a landmark experiment in governance and artificial intelligence. The Bloomsbury Intelligence and Security Institute stated that Diella will “test how much people can trust a minister made of ones and zeroes” and predicted that her legal status may soon be challenged in court.
If successful, analysts believe Diella could set a precedent for other countries to experiment with AI-assisted governance models.
The development comes amid wider global debates about the role of AI in politics and law. In the United States, lawmakers in Ohio recently passed a bill banning human-AI marriages, classifying AI as “nonsentient entities” to prevent them from holding spousal rights or financial authority.
Meanwhile, in the UK, an MP made headlines earlier this year after creating an AI replica of himself, an experiment that drew mixed reactions and raised questions about authenticity and accountability in political communication.
For now, Albania’s “pregnant AI minister” has become a symbol of how rapidly technology is blurring the boundaries between the digital and political worlds, sparking both fascination and unease around the future of machine governance.