Ask Amina: Negotiating ethical frameworks for AI communication in humanitarian narratives

The emergence of AI refugee avatars, exemplified by the experimental avatars from the United Nations University Centre for Policy Research, Amina and Abdalla, raises urgent ethical questions about the role of artificial intelligence in humanitarian communication.While framed as innovative tools for donor engagement and public awareness, such projects expose the paradoxes of digital humanitarianism: they risk commodifying trauma, instrumentalising refugees for institutional agendas and eroding accountability when fictionalised AI agents speak on behalf of displaced persons.This essay interrogates these dynamics through the critical lens of the ʻhumanitarian complexʼ, situating the avatars within broader debates on the political economy of AI, representation and communication ethics.I use a qualitative critical methodology combining discourse analysis and media analysis to examine AI refugee avatars as socio-technical communicative infrastructures embedded within the humanitarian complex, interrogating how institutional, technological and discursive conditions shape representation, power and participation.Rather than advancing purely technical safeguards, this essay advocates a normative framework that emphasises refugee agency, participatory design and transparency as non-negotiable principles for ethical AI communication.