SP candidate Islam Alijaj: He lets the avatar speak for itself

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If Islam Alijaj (37) wants to say something to the Zurich city council, the SP politician needs help. An assistant accompanies him as a lectern and takes over for him. Due to the cerebral palsy that the SP candidate for the National Council has, he has difficulty walking and talking.

Alijaj is now receiving virtual support in the election campaign. He and his team have developed an avatar that speaks for him. He looks like Alijaj and has a similar voice. But he speaks more fluently and therefore more understandably.

He types, his avatar speaks

Alijaj already stood as a candidate for the National Council in 2019, without success. Now he’s trying for the second time. “With my speech impediment it is extremely difficult to convey content,” says the SP politician. Short, personal videos would work well. “But as soon as it gets longer and has more content, people drop out.” A difficult starting point for a politician.

When someone from his campaign team had the idea of ​​creating an avatar using artificial intelligence (AI), he was immediately enthusiastic, but also skeptical. Ultimately, he discovered that regular speech recognition software like Apple’s Siri didn’t understand him.

But the skepticism quickly disappeared. It only took one video shoot to record him and his voice, Alijaj says. This was then converted into an avatar with a synthetic voice using generative AI. The politician can now simply type what he wants to say – and the avatar converts the text into speech. Five videos have been made in which Alijaj presents his election goals. The avatar still speaks standard German. But technically a Swiss-German variant is also possible, according to the Social Democrat.

Digitalization not only brings relief

For Alijaj, the whole thing isn’t just a funny gimmick. Rather, he sees this as a huge opportunity for people with disabilities like him. “My big dream would be a technical solution that could interpret for me at the same time and make me independent of my speaking assistant.” This would not only give Alijaj independence but also ease the huge financial burden. With more than 170,000 francs, the SP member has one of the highest campaign budgets in the canton. A large part was spent on language assistance, says Alijaj.

But the Zurich resident with Kosovar roots does not want to glorify digitalization either. In recent decades we have seen that many developments would create even more barriers for people with disabilities, he points out. It is therefore clear to him that as a Land Council member he wants to ensure that “we finally improve digital accessibility”.

Source:Blick