No body. No signature. No passport. Yet, in the small Balkan country of Albania, "Diella," or "Sun," is officially a Cabinet minister. Originally a digital assistant on the government's e-Albania portal, Diella was promoted to the world's first virtual artificial intelligence minister by Prime Minister Edi Rama in September.

Draped in a folkloric Albanian dress and powered by algorithms, Diella's AI avatar smiled from a government monitor. Rama promised a new era in which "public tenders will be 100% incorruptible, and every public fund 100% transparent." In a country that has long battled corruption, the promise sounded familiar. But behind Diella's digital smiles stands a very human question: What happens to responsibility when power has no human face?

When President Bajram Begaj approved the new 16-member Cabinet on September 15, Diella was missing. The virtual minister, announced with fanfare by Rama, had no line in the official document. Instead, Article 2 of the decree assigned Rama himself "responsibility for the establishment and functioning of the virtual minister," effectively placing the system under his direct authority.

In practice, the act gave Rama control over an entity that has no legal existence. Under Article 100 of Albania's constitution, every member of the Council of Ministers must be a natural person, someone capable of deliberation, voting and bearing both moral and political responsibility.

"The very notion of an 'AI minister' has no basis in Albania's constitution," said legal expert Sokol Hazizaj. "The constitutional meaning of the word minister is inseparable from a physical person and the responsibilities attached to that role. A minister is accountable to citizens — something no algorithm can be."

Hazizaj said laws on personal data protection and the civil service only touched on peripheral issues of responsibility without defining how AI can operate or who is legally accountable for its actions.

'Just a chatbot'

Since Diella's debut as minister, Albania's government has offered no details about the AI's training data, underlying code or human supervision. On the e-Albania portal, Diella still appears as a smiling avatar greeting users with simple answers, but there is no evidence that the AI has a true decision-making role.

"Right now, Diella is just a chatbot, not an autonomous system," said Besmir Semanaj, who has 17 years of experience in information technology. "Artificial intelligence could support government decisions if properly trained and monitored, but the real issue is transparency: We don't know what data it relies on or who is responsible for maintaining it."

Adopted in 2024 as the world's first comprehensive regulation on artificial intelligence, the European Union's AI Act classifies such systems as high-risk. Every algorithm influencing public administration in the European Union must be reviewed and signed off by a human decision-maker — a safeguard against what the EU calls "automation without accountability."

As a candidate for EU membership, Albania is not yet bound by these standards, but the government has pledged to align legislation with the laws of the European Union.

"If we build systems powered by artificial intelligence, we must also build institutions to monitor and control them," said Semanaj. "Investments in AI must go hand in hand with investments in oversight, or we risk creating systems we cannot supervise."

A political distraction?

When Albania's new parliament met on September 18 to present the government's program for a fourth term, tempers flared instantly. What was meant as a policy debate ended within minutes amid shouting, banging on desks and walkouts. As Rama, who holds direct responsibility for the virtual AI minister, paused to give Diella the floor, the chamber's screens lit up.

A digital figure appeared in traditional Albanian costume, speaking in a calm synthetic voice — a fusion of folklore and code. "Judge me not by my origin, but by my function," Diella told lawmakers. "I may not be human, but I am constitutional. I serve the people who wrote the constitution."

Moments later right-wing opposition lawmakers, who dispute the legitimacy of the elections in May that determined the Parliament's composition, walked out in protest.

Artan Fuga, a professor of communications and member of Albania's Academy of Sciences, said Diella was less a technological milestone than an act of political distraction. "Rama used artificial intelligence to create a second center of attention," he said. "Instead of debating the government's legitimacy or program, the opposition found itself debating an avatar."

Fuga said the risks, however, were not theater. "At a time when Albania still questions whether its elections are truly free, we are told there is no longer a need to control the government through parliament, to voice civic will or to demand ethical transparency, because pure intelligence can do it all," he said.

Beyond the political experiment lies a deeper question: Who, in the end, decides? Technically, Diella could one day make determinations in an official capacity. But Albanians aren't so sure that Diella should be given the power to do so.

"Algorithms can process information — but they cannot weigh moral consequences," said Fuga. "Once you elevate technical rationality above political accountability, you risk erasing democracy itself."