Lebanon had not had a president since 2022. No fewer than 13 parliamentary sessions to elect a leader have failed, paralyzing the country, as it continues to free fall towards a failed state.

The country desperately needed informed and objective leadership – which it has never had, as each successive President and government has acted in their own personal and political interests.

The country needed a rational figure-head that learned from the past, and did not repeat the same mistakes over and over.

For nearly a century, AnNahar Newspaper has consistently pressured politicians and governments for change and reform, in an unwavering commitment to journalism's role in fostering a fair and democratic society.

Our objective was to leverage 90 years of impartial reporting to demonstrate objective and rational leadership is possible, with an initiative the local political elite and the world could not ignore – and instead, must learn from.

With the Lebanese government failing to elect a president, the country in desperate need of real leadership and the Lebanese people tired of waiting, AnNahar stepped in.

To demonstrate to Lebanon and the world that impartial, objective and rationale leadership is possible, we built the world’s first AI designed towards governance.

Using 90 years of AnNahar’s impartial reporting, we engineered the world’s first AI President. A Generative AI system designed to enhance decision-making by synthesizing historical and current data to generate potential solutions to the challenges facing Lebanon.

Never before has there been a figure-head with such an extensive knowledge of the country’s past coupled with objective and rational decision making skills, devoid of corruption, bias, and any political or personal agendas. An informed voice of reason amid divisive counter-productive political rhetoric.

We set out to demonstrate the value of AnNahar's 90 years of impartial reporting in building a fair and democratic state. But also to make a poignant point to the Lebanese and the political elite: leading Lebanon rationally and objectively is completely possible, when decisions are highly-informed by country’s past and completely unencumbered by political affiliation and personal biases.

Our strategy was not just to say this, which as a newspaper we have many times, but to prove it to Lebanon and the world.

So we took an innovative and tech-based approach, creating the AI President of Lebanon, trained on 90 years of impartial reporting and the ability to analyze it against current events to provide informed, objective and rational policies.

To build the AI President, we trained the generative AI system with every past edition of AnNahar dating back 90 years. The AI President exists on a website that anyone can access.

We teased the arrival of a new leader to the Lebanese public through a nationwide campaign across outdoor, TV, and social platforms, keeping the identity hidden.

The AI President was revealed in a nationwide broadcast, with a live interview with the Editor-in-Chief of AnNahar. Answering in-depth questions on Lebanon’s situation, the AI President effectively showcased its unbiased and data-driven pragmatic solutions to the country's political deadlock and myriad of problems.

AnNahar then transformed its daily edition into a full-fledged political platform, authored by the AI President - containing informed solutions and policies to reform Lebanon and urging citizens to access its wealth of knowledge online and ask questions, facilitating an informed and country-wide dialogue.

The AI president has been able to catalyze tangible change on-ground. Government officials have begun to use it in cabinet sessions to help build better directives and shape more successful policies, providing un-biased data-driven insights and solutions to the challenges being debated, shaping the course of the meeting’s discussions - while seeding new hope for fair and effective Lebanese leadership.

For AnNahar, this resulted in the highest readership in its history, by catching Lebanon and the world's attention. More than 100,000+ responses have been generated to date. The physical edition sold-out in just a few hours, and website visits increased by 31%. Subscriptions grew by 28%, directly linked to this campaign.

Covered by several global media publications, the AI president garnered $25 million+ in earned media and became the most trending topic on X and other social platforms.