What happened. In September 2025 Prime Minister Edi Rama presented Diella, until then a virtual assistant on the e-Albania services portal, as a 'Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence' with the task of eliminating corruption from public procurement. A BIRN reality check published on 14 August 2026 found that the role remained unclear in practice. The director of the Public Procurement Agency, Reida Kashta, said a project to develop an AI-powered procurement system was 'still in progress' and that the agency had 'just completed the drafting of the terms of reference' for the tender to select the system's builder.
The legal basis. Albania amended its Public Procurement Law in 2024 to allow AI in drafting requirements, dynamic purchasing and digital auctions, a digital complaints system and contract monitoring; the agency says this gives a legal basis. Experts quoted by BIRN argued that a horizontal AI law, still in consultation, and institutions with clear powers should come first, and questioned the data-protection authority's capacity to supervise. An opposition MP asked who is responsible for decisions influenced by a system with no legally defined status. The atlas case entry follows the separate constitutional challenge brought by opposition deputies.
Why it is a signal. Diella is the most visible example of a government presenting an AI system as an office-holder. A year on, the substance looks like a conventional e-procurement modernisation project, while the political framing has run far ahead of implementation. This pattern, symbolic personification of AI combined with slow institutional build-out, may recur where AI is used to signal anti-corruption commitment, for instance in EU accession contexts.
Hypothesis. The accountability question is not specific to Albania: wherever AI is presented as a decision-maker, responsibility must be legally reattached to a human office for decisions to be contestable. Courts and auditors, rather than technology, are likely to determine what such systems may do.
What to watch. The procurement tender and its technical specifications; whether the Supreme Audit Institution develops methods to audit algorithmic tendering; complaint and appeal rights for bidders affected by AI-assisted decisions; and whether other governments copy the personification.
Original source: Balkan Insight (BIRN)