Interrogating artificial intelligence in intercultural communication

This article presents an assignment for undergraduate intercultural communication courses that invites students to interrogate large language models (LLMs) as producers of cultural representation and as intercultural interlocutors. Built on the premise that human–artificial intelligence (AI) interaction may constitute a form of intercultural contact, the assignment asks students to conduct a cultural interview with an LLM and analyze both its cultural representations and its communicative style through concepts such as representation, power, essentialism, identity, and ethics. Drawing on critical intercultural communication and AI scholarship, the assignment examines what AI says about culture, how AI communicates culturally, and whose cultural knowledge its outputs privilege.Courses The activity is adaptable for courses in media literacy, communication technology, or communication ethics.Objectives Upon completion of the activity, students should be able to (1) analyze how AI represents cultural knowledge; (2) evaluate how AI functions as an intercultural interlocutor through interactional style and characteristics; (3) apply intercultural communication concepts, such as representation, power, essentialism, and identity, that relate to ethical concerns in communication with AI; and (4) synthesize experiential observations and scholarship into collaborative, evidence-based analysis of AI’s role in intercultural communication.