👩‍💼 Albania appoints world’s first AI Minister

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Albania just appointed the world’s first AI-powered government minister, signaling how fast politics and governance are being reshaped by artificial intelligence.

PLUS: How to clone any voice in seconds for free

TODAY IN AI

👩‍💼 Albania appoints world’s first AI Minister

Prime Minister Edi Rama introduced Diella, a virtual minister created with AI, who will oversee the country’s public procurement process. Diella already powers Albania’s e-government platform and now takes on a formal role inside government.

→ Diella will manage public tenders with the goal of making processes more transparent
→ Appears as a digital avatar dressed in traditional Albanian clothing
→ Marks the first time a non-human has been appointed to a government position
→ Part of Rama’s broader push for Albania’s EU membership by 2030

Why is important: This is a milestone in AI adoption at the state level. If successful, Albania could set a precedent for how governments use AI not just as tools, but as official actors in public administration.

💸Perplexity raised $200M at $20B valuation

AI search startup Perplexity, which competes with Google by providing conversational answers, has secured $200 million in new funding at a $20 billion valuation, just two months after raising $100 million at $18 billion.

→ Total funding since founding: $1.5 billion

→ Annual recurring revenue (ARR) approaching $200 million

→ Positions itself as a challenger to Google’s search dominance

Why is important: Perplexity’s rapid growth shows strong investor confidence in AI-powered search alternatives. The company is emerging as a serious competitor to Google, highlighting the rising influence of conversational AI in web search.

HOW TO AI

How to clone any voice in seconds for free

Chatterbox is a new AI voice model that outperforms ElevenLabs in multiple benchmarks. It lets you clone any voice using just a few seconds of audio and generate unlimited realistic speech. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to use it to clone any voice completely free, with detailed, step-by-step instructions.

🧰 Who is this for

• Content creators wanting realistic voiceovers without hiring voice actors

• Developers building apps, games, or audio content with unique voices

• Podcasters or YouTubers who want multiple voice options for narration

• Anyone curious about AI-generated voice cloning

STEP 1: Access Chatterbox on Resemble AI

Head over to the Resemble AI website and create an account. Once logged in, the dashboard will display the "Create New Voice" option, under the dropdown labeled "Voice Design", on the left sidebar.

Once you click on it, you’ll see several voice cloning options:

Rapid Voice Clone: ~90% accuracy, requires just 10 seconds of audio, available in all languages.

Professional Voice Clone: ~98% accuracy, requires ~3 minutes of audio, supports 23 languages. Requires upgrading your plan.

For this tutorial, we’ll focus on Rapid Voice Clone, which is perfect for quickly cloning any voice with just 10 seconds of audio.

STEP 2: Select the Voice Type

Click on Rapid Voice Clone and then hit Next. You’ll be asked to choose between models like Core and Multilingual.

We’ll choose Multilingual to explore Resemble AI’s new Chatterbox model, which supports English, French, German, Spanish, and more. After selecting it, click Next.

STEP 3: Upload Your Audio Sample

You’ll now see the upload section. Drag and drop your audio sample into the field and click Next. Chatterbox will start cloning your voice, which will be ready in under a minute.

While the clone is processing, you can adjust emotional tones such as happiness, sadness, or neutrality using a simple slider. Once you’ve set the desired emotion, click Save to finalize your voice clone.

STEP 4: Test and Generate Speech

Once your voice clone is ready, click Try Now next to your cloned voice. This will open the text-to-speech interface. Type or paste the text you want the voice to say, then click the Play button. Within seconds, your audio will be generated in the exact voice you provided.

STEP 5: Export Your Voice

After verifying the audio, you can download your file by clicking the Download button at the bottom-left corner of the screen. The voice clone is now ready to use in videos, podcasts, apps, or any project requiring realistic speech.

ESSENTIAL BITES

• Anthropic rolled out Claude’s memory feature for Team and Enterprise users, letting the AI remember projects, client priorities, and context across chats, while regular users still have Incognito mode.

• Reddit, Yahoo, Medium, and others launched the Really Simple Licensing (RSL) Standard and RSL Collective to ensure writers and publishers are fairly compensated when AI uses their content.

• Alibaba released Qwen3-Next, an 80B parameter hybrid model that outperforms Qwen3 while cutting training costs significantly.

• OpenAI and Microsoft announced a joint “non-binding” MoU to extend their partnership, with final contract terms still under negotiation.

⚙️ Hot AI Tools:

• 🤖 ERNIE X1.1: Baidu’s new SOTA reasoning model.

• 📊 Claude: Create PowerPoint, Excel & PDF files.

• 💻 YouMind: Turn ideas into creations with AI.

• 🎨 Canva AI: Generate creative assets with AI.

That's it! See you tomorrow

- Dr. Alvaro Cintas