On September 11, 2025, Albanian actor Anila Bisha was at home watching Prime Minister Edi Rama’s live presentation of the new cabinet when she saw herself named minister — not as a person but as an avatar.
Rama introduced “Diella” as the world’s first virtual minister for artificial intelligence. The avatar used Bisha’s face and voice. Bisha, an actor with nearly 40 years on stage and screen, says she was shocked. “I laughed about it with my family at first,” she told DW. “I did not understand the consequences that would follow.”
The avatar had previously been used as a digital assistant on e-Albania, the government portal that guides citizens through public services. According to Bisha’s court filing, she signed a contract in December 2024 permitting her image and voice to be used for that specific chatbot for one year. She says she was not told it would be presented as a minister or used beyond that purpose.
Her lawyer, Aranit Roshi, says the contract was limited to an exclusive purpose: the image and voice could not be used for other products. Bisha has asked the Administrative Court to suspend use of her likeness until a final ruling. A hearing to decide on the temporary suspension is scheduled for February 23. She names the Council of Ministers, the National Agency for Information Society (AKSHI), the private company that produced the avatar, and Prime Minister Rama as defendants, and seeks €1 million in moral damages.
The government has dismissed the allegations, saying the claim has no basis and that the court should decide.
Legal experts frame the dispute not primarily as a copyright issue but as one of personal data protection. Elton Peppo, associate professor at the University of Tirana’s Faculty of Law, notes Albanian law aligns with EU data protection standards, and that a person’s image and voice count as personal data: any use beyond the agreed duration or purpose can be a breach.
Media scholar Mark Marku calls the case a form of identity duplication. He emphasizes that licensing a likeness for a specific purpose does not transfer a person’s beliefs or political positioning. There is a substantive difference between a digital assistant answering technical queries and a minister speaking for the state. After the cabinet announcement, “Diella” addressed parliament and appeared at public events inside and outside Albania. Bisha says people have started calling her “Minister Diella” in public and that she sometimes feared what the digital double might say.
Internationally, the project has been celebrated. In February 2026, “Diella” received the Global Future Fit Seal at the World Governments Summit in Dubai, chosen from more than 1,500 submissions from over 100 countries. Technically, however, experts say “Diella” remains a chatbot operating within defined parameters. IT expert Besmir Semanaj told DW there is no public evidence the system has become an autonomous AI decision-maker and that it is unclear whether it was trained as an independent system.
The avatar is part of Albania’s state digital governance, overseen by AKSHI, which manages e-Albania, public databases, state IT systems and procurement. In December 2025, Albania’s Special Court Against Corruption and Organized Crime ordered precautionary measures, including house arrest, against senior AKSHI officials amid a Special Anti-Corruption Prosecution investigation into alleged irregularities in public tenders and procurement related to digital infrastructure and service contracts.
That investigation is legally separate from Bisha’s lawsuit, but critics say perception matters: if the institution managing the system faces corruption allegations, it affects the credibility of initiatives presented as increasing transparency and reducing human corruption.
Edited by: Aingeal Flanagan