Actor wants her face back as she sues government for using her to create AI minister
One actress came to a surprising realization when she found 'herself' in a government role, discovering that her likeness had been used for Albania's new AI minister without her consent or knowledge.
By definition artificial intelligence is always working from things that it has already seen, and while these data sets are often comprised of millions, if not billions of data entries, sometimes things can be a little more uncanny than expected.
That's exactly what happened when Luigi Mangione seemingly started modeling clothes for Shein despite being in prison at the time, and you've likely seen eerily similar AI recreations of other famous figures when browsing social media in the last few months.
Consider, then, how frightening it must be for individuals to find themselves replicated in a generated creation, and that feeling of horror is what befell Albanian actor Anila Bisha when she saw what the government had introduced as its new AI minister.
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As reported by the Independent, Albania launched the world's first fully AI generated government minister last year, referred to as Diella, and she had a rather familiar face to some.
Diella's purpose, as explained by Prime Minister Edi Rama, is to ensure that all public procurement tenders are handled with no corruption whatsoever, and the AI minister even 'gave birth' to 80 digital children to assist each member of parliment.
Bisha was understandably horrified to find her likeness used for the government's dystopian project, and the popular film and theater actor is now demanding that her face and voice is removed from the fake minister.
Her laywer, Aranit Roshi, proclaimed their attempts to sue the government as "the first legal move to prevent the abuse of Anila's image," as she has filed a formal request via an Albianian administrative court in an attempt to cease all use of her image.
Speaking to the Associated Press, Bisha illustrated: "It was surprising when I heard the prime minister declare it. I asked how this could happen without my knowledge, without anyone asking me if I wanted my image to be used or not."
She had previously signed a contract that allowed her face and voice to be used in the government's new online platform, e-Albania, but claims that she was never informed of plans to use that alongside artificial intelligence.
Bisha has also noted that she believes her image is being used now as a political statement, which might complicate attempts to distance herself from the AI creation, which is typically shown dressed in traditional Albanian clothes.