On 11 September 2025 Albanian actor Anila Bisha was at home watching Prime Minister Edi Rama present his new cabinet live when she heard an unexpected announcement: an avatar named “Diella” had been introduced as the world’s first virtual minister for artificial intelligence — and it used Bisha’s face and voice.
Bisha, a performer with nearly 40 years on stage and screen, says she was stunned. “I laughed about it with my family at first,” she told DW. “I did not understand the consequences that would follow.”
The avatar had already been deployed as a digital assistant on e-Albania, the government portal that helps citizens navigate public services. According to Bisha’s court filing, she signed a contract in December 2024 permitting use of her image and voice for that specific chatbot for one year; she says she was not told it would be unveiled as a minister or repurposed beyond that narrow role.
Her lawyer, Aranit Roshi, says the agreement was purpose-specific and exclusive: the likeness 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 on the temporary suspension is scheduled for 23 February. 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 courts should decide.
Legal experts frame the dispute less as a copyright fight than as a question 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 describes the case as a form of identity duplication, stressing that licensing a likeness 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.” Following 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 specialist 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 forms part of Albania’s state digital-governance architecture 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 inquiry 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 agency that runs the system is under a corruption probe, it undermines the credibility of initiatives presented as enhancing transparency and reducing human corruption.
Edited by Aingeal Flanagan.