An AI-generated government “minister” this week made its debut with an address in Albania‘s parliament. The country’s Prime Minister, Edi Rama, introduced the bot as a symbol of his government’s push for transparency and innovation.

The government said “minister” Diella (which means sun in Albanian) will help tackle corruption in public spending. But opposition politicians were scornful of the move.

Diella, who appears in traditional Albanian dress, declared in a three-minute address: “The Constitution speaks of institutions at the people’s service. It doesn’t speak of chromosomes, of flesh or blood.”

News of Albania’s AI-bot has led the Express to wonder whether our own Chancellor Rachel Reeves could be replaced by artificial intelligence and whether it would do a better job as the UK economy continues to suffer sluggish growth under the Labour Goverment.

The Chancellor received bad news this week as official figures showed the highest August borrowing for five years. That triggered warnings that tax rises at the autumn Budget now look “inevitable”.

ONS data showed public sector net debt stands at £2.91trillion, estimated to be 96.4% of gross domestic product (GDP). This was up 0.5 percentage points on a year ago and remains at levels not seen since the early 1960s.

This week it also emerged that a record number of people turned to debt relief orders (DROs) in August to ease their financial struggles.

Insolvency Service figures show in total the number of people going financially insolvent across England and Wales jumped by 16% last month compared with the same month a year earlier.

Some 11,348 people entered insolvency in the two home nations in August, which was also 7% higher than the total in July this year.

The insolvency total was made up of 4,239 debt relief orders (DROs), 622 bankruptcies and 6,487 individual voluntary arrangements (IVAs).