Tirana mayor Erion Veliaj uses AI avatar to address voters from jail

Erion Veliaj, the mayor of Albania’s capital, Tirana, has spoken to voters through an AI copy of himself, promising free school meals. The video was posted on his official Instagram account and is indeed labelled as AI-generated content.

The main problem is not AI-generated content from a mayor, but the fact that he is in jail, held in custody awaiting trial.

In the four-minute video, a digital Veliaj sits in front of the flags of Albania and of Tirana, opening with a thank-you to residents at the start of the school year and an explanation of why he is not there in person.

“For 20 months my hostage-taking has continued, and I cannot send this greeting except through artificial intelligence,” the AI-major says.

Most of the video is a tour of his record, as he recalls run-down nurseries he found in 2015, schools damaged in the 2019 earthquake, and the new schools and nurseries built since.

The goal, the avatar says, was that a good school should be open to every child in every neighbourhood, regardless of what the family earns.

Towards the end, it turns to free school lunches, which he had promised before.

“It is true that they ambushed me and locked me up, but I will keep this promise,” he says.

“However much they want to keep me away from the city, and from you, Tirana is the honour of my life,” it continues. “To repay that honour, I will keep working even from the cell where they have locked me up.”

The video drew backlash in Albania, as local media also likened it to the AI-generated speeches that Imran Khan, Pakistan’s former prime minister, used to reach supporters from prison.

Erion Veliaj was arrested in February 2025, and Prosecutors at SPAK, Albania’s special anti-corruption office, accuse him and his wife of a scheme that took about €1 million in bribes and city funds.

The charges include corruption, money laundering, and hiding assets, all of which they denied.

A court sent the case to trial in February this year, and in September, Albania’s High Court ruled that he must remain in custody while the case proceeds.

Even so, Veliaj remains the official mayor, even though Tirana’s council voted to remove him in 2025 and a new vote was called.

But in November, the Constitutional Court ruled that the dismissal broke the constitution, and the vote was called off.

Albania hopes to join the EU but is not yet a member, and as a result, the bloc’s AI labelling rules , in force since August, do not apply there.