Maltese engineer uses AI to turn dusty constitution into viral kitchen-table chat

**Local engineer uses AI to turn Malta’s 200-year-old constitution into a WhatsApp-forward that even nanna understands**

By [Hot Malta Staff]

VALLETTA – When software engineer Luke Camilleri tried to explain to his 82-year-old grandmother why she was entitled to a new pension supplement, he ended up chasing her around the kitchen with a 96-page PDF and a highlighter. “She told me, ‘Kużin, if God wanted me to read that, He’d have given me stronger glasses and a law degree,’” Camilleri laughs.

That kitchen stand-off has now snowballed into Kostituzzjoni.mt, a free AI tool that translates Malta’s 1921 constitution—amended 24 times and strewn with colonial legalese—into 400-word Maltese, English, Italian, even meme-speak summaries that can be read aloud by a għannej-style voice clone.

“Basically I fed the whole parchment into GPT-4, then asked it to pretend it’s explaining the law to someone queueing for pastizzi at Is-Serkin at 3 a.m.,” says the 29-year-old Żebbuġ native, who still works remotely for a Berlin fintech so he can live above his mother’s rabbit-warren flat.

### From parchment to push-notification
The project went live last Friday at 8 p.m.; by Monday morning 42,000 unique users—roughly one in ten Maltese adults—had clicked “Ġib il-kostituzzjoni tiegħi” (Get my constitution). The site’s cheekiest feature: a “Randan” mode that renders every article as a Facebook-style recipe post (“Article 33: Take one pinch of free speech, season with responsibility, bake for 45 minutes at EU regulation heat…”).

But Camilleri insists the jokes are a Trojan horse. “Click the ‘Serju’ button and you get the same text with hyperlinks to the original PDF, court judgments, and EU directive transpositions. Students are already citing it in coursework; NGOs are printing the one-page summaries for outreach in Buġibba and Marsa.”

### Cultural remix
To keep the tone locally rooted, he crowdsourced idioms via the Facebook group “Malta Memes & Dreams.” Suggestions ranged from “Daħħalni daħħalni mhux daħħalni daħħalni” (Don’t double-tax me, bro) to “Kif tgħidulha, kif ma tgħidulhiex” (freedom of expression vs. hate speech). The most up-voted phrase—“Kollox possibli, imma mhux kollox permess” (everything is possible, but not everything is allowed)—now headlines Article 42 on economic freedom.

Professor Claire Bonello, constitutional law lecturer at the University of Malta, calls the tool “the first genuine democratisation of the supreme law since Mintoff printed it on cheap brown paper in 1974.” She warns, however, that simplification must not equal dilution. “AI can summarise, but it cannot replace the interpretative nuance of courts. Users still need to cross-check.”

### Political ripple
Within hours of launch, Opposition MP Karol Aquilina tweeted the link with the caption, “Finally, a government website that loads faster than a Paceville pizza at 4 a.m.” Labour’s Whip Glenn Bedingfield retorted that the tool “confirms citizens already trust Labour to deliver tech innovation—even when it comes from a Berlin bedroom.”

Civil society is less partisan. Moviment Graffitti plans to laminate waterproof versions for fishermen protesting oil-exploration rights; the hunters’ lobby FKNK wants a “tracking” feature that flags any proposed amendment within minutes of publication.

### Community impact in real time
At the Dar tal-Providenza charity shop in Sliema, volunteers now paste the daily “Article of the Day” on the window. “Older shoppers stop, read, then debate whether the 1987 constitutional change really saved their bus route,” says coordinator Maria Spiteri.

Back in Żebbuġ, nanna Ġemma has become the family’s go-to constitutional scholar. “I still can’t work Netflix,” she shrugs, “but I now know that if the government wants my field, they must pay me within a reasonable time. And I found that out while kneading qassatat.”

Camilleri is already training the model on the European Convention Act, but he’s proudest of a single screenshot: a 14-year-old student who WhatsApped him, “Sir, I finally get why my vote at 16 matters. Graffiti isn’t just decoration on the wall—it’s in the document that built the wall.”

For a nation that loves to argue over everything from festa fireworks to ferry timetables, the constitution is suddenly the hottest topic on the kitchen table—no highlighters required.