UN Institute Unveils AI Refugee Avatar: Revolutionizing Humanitarian Aid for Displaced Populations

In an innovative initiative spearheaded by a research institute affiliated with the United Nations, two artificial intelligence (AI) avatars have been developed to serve as educational tools on the subject of refugee matters.

The project was detailed in a report published by 404 Media, which chronicled an experiment conducted by a class at the United Nations University Center for Policy Research. The result was the creation of two AI agents or avatars: Amina, a fictional woman who has fled Sudan and is residing in a refugee camp in Chad; and Abdalla, a fictional member of the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group in Sudan.

The experiment’s website allows users to engage in dialogue with both Amina and Abdalla, although initial registration encounters may result in error messages.

Eduardo Albrecht, a professor at Columbia University and senior fellow at the UNU-CPR, communicated to 404 Media that this endeavor was merely an exploratory exercise of concept development rather than a proposed solution for the UN.

A summary paper on this work posits potential future applications of these avatars, such as expediently presenting compelling arguments to donors. However, it also acknowledges that numerous workshop participants who interacted with the agents expressed reservations, including the sentiment that refugees are more than capable of articulating their own experiences in real-life scenarios.