Diella, whose name means 'sun' in Albanian, is an artificial intelligence virtual assistant developed by the National Agency for Information Society of Albania (AKSHI) in cooperation with Microsoft. The system was introduced on 19 January 2025 as a chatbot integrated into the eAlbania platform, Albania's centralised government services portal through which approximately 95 percent of public services have been available exclusively online since 2022. Diella was built using OpenAI's large language models accessed via Microsoft's Azure cloud platform, with AKSHI's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory designing the workflows and scripts that guide the system's behaviour when responding to citizens' requests. The AI director at AKSHI, Enio Kaso, leads the development team. The system uses a fine-tuned version of OpenAI's GPT model to understand and respond in conversational Albanian, enabling citizens to navigate public services and receive guidance on document issuance.
Diella 1.0 launched as a text-based chatbot on the eAlbania portal, responding to citizens' questions by guiding them to the correct government service. Several months later, Diella 2.0 was introduced with expanded capabilities including voice interaction and an animated avatar depicting a woman in the traditional Albanian clothing of Zadrima, a historical region in northern Albania. Albanian actress Anila Bisha provided both the likeness and the voice used for Diella's avatar on the eAlbania platform, under an agreement valid until December 2025. The system assists citizens with navigating approximately 1,000 public services available through the platform, processing inquiries and facilitating the issuance of digital documents. By September 2025, Diella had registered 972,000 interactions with citizens, while 36,000 documents issued through the platform carried its digital seal, establishing a new standard in Albanian public administration for AI-assisted document processing.
In a significant expansion of the system's role, on 12 September 2025, Prime Minister Edi Rama formally appointed Diella as 'Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence' in the fourth Rama government, following a presidential decree authorising the creation of a virtual AI minister. This made Diella the first AI system in the world to be named in a cabinet-level government role. The appointment was motivated by Albania's persistent challenges with corruption in public procurement, which has been a major obstacle to the country's European Union accession bid. Albania ranked 80th out of 180 countries in Transparency International's 2024 corruption index, and the government has set a target of EU membership by 2030.
In its ministerial capacity, Diella was entrusted with oversight of all public tender decisions, operating at four stages of the procurement contract process: drafting terms of reference, specifying eligibility criteria, setting price upper-bound limits, and verifying document validity. Prime Minister Rama stated that Diella 'never sleeps, she doesn't need to be paid, she has no personal interests' and claimed that with Diella's oversight, public tenders would become '100 percent corruption-free' and 'every public fund submitted to the tender procedure will be perfectly transparent.' A critical safeguard in the procurement oversight function is that human procurement experts must approve all AI recommendations before they take effect, maintaining a human-in-the-loop oversight model for procurement decisions.
On 18 September 2025, Rama presented a video of Diella delivering a three-minute speech to the Albanian parliament from two large screens. In the address, the AI stated: 'I'm not here to replace people, but to help them' and 'The Constitution speaks of institutions at the people's service. It doesn't speak of chromosomes, of flesh or blood.' The presentation prompted immediate opposition protests. Gazmend Bardhi of the Democratic Party described Diella as 'a propaganda fantasy' and 'a virtual facade to hide this government's gigantic daily thefts,' calling it 'buffoonery.' Opposition lawmakers banged tables and boycotted the subsequent vote on the Cabinet's programme, which nonetheless passed with 82 votes in favour in the 140-seat parliament. A court challenge to the constitutionality of Diella's appointment was initiated, as Albania's constitution requires ministers to be natural persons.
Diella 2.0 also announced plans to expand further, with Prime Minister Rama revealing that the system would generate 83 virtual AI assistants for ruling-party members of parliament. These parliamentary copilots, planned to function through 2026 as an experiment in automating legislative operations, would brief MPs on legislative matters, summarise parliamentary absences, record debate proceedings, and propose counterarguments to proposed legislation.
The system has attracted significant expert commentary on risks and governance gaps. Technology governance specialists have emphasised that Diella should not be seen as a substitute for governance, legal frameworks, or human judgement. Concerns have been raised about the system's vulnerability to bias from flawed input data and algorithms, susceptibility to manipulation despite automation, and the absence of clear accountability frameworks for erroneous AI decisions. Albania must comply with the EU AI Act as part of its accession process, requiring risk assessments, bias detection, cybersecurity monitoring, and operational documentation. The Context News analysis noted that the system was built using Azure OpenAI models but raised questions about digital sovereignty given the reliance on foreign-made AI infrastructure, potentially vulnerable to cyberattacks. Public scepticism was also documented, with citizens questioning whether the AI itself might be corrupted or used as a scapegoat for continued malfeasance.