A United Nations research institute created an AI refugee avatar

A research institute connected to the United Nations has created two AI-powered avatars designed to teach people about refugee issues.

404 Media wrote about an experiment conducted by a class at the United Nations University Center for Policy Research that resulted in the creation of two AI agents or avatars — Amina, a fictional woman who fled Sudan and is living in a refugee camp in Chad, and Abdalla, a fictional soldier with the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary force in Sudan.

Users are supposed to be able to talk to Amina and Abdalla on the experiment’s website, though I received an error message when I tried to register on Saturday afternoon.

Eduardo Albrecht, a Columbia professor and a senior fellow at the UNU-CPR, told 404 Media that he and his students were “just playing around with the concept” and not proposing this as a solution for the UN.

A paper summarizing this work suggested that these avatars could eventually be used “to quickly make a case to donors.” However, it also noted that many workshop attendees who interacted with the agents responded negatively, for example saying that refugees “are very capable of speaking for themselves in real life.”