AI-Mediated Intercultural Communication: A Scoping Review of Ethics, Education, Language, and Global Connectivity

Abstract

Artificial intelligence is increasingly reshaping intercultural communication by mediating how people write, translate, learn, interpret, and exchange meaning across linguistic and cultural boundaries. This scoping review examines how AI-mediated intercultural communication operates across ethics, education, language, and global connectivity. The study applies a scoping review design to map recent interdisciplinary literature on artificial intelligence, intercultural communication, language learning, translation, AI literacy, trust, bias, and governance. The review synthesises evidence from recent scholarly sources published in the Scopus database from 2022 to 2026. The findings show that artificial intelligence can support intercultural communication by reducing language barriers, enabling real-time translation, personalising language learning, providing automated feedback, and creating opportunities for pragmatic rehearsal and intercultural education. In higher education, AI tools can strengthen intercultural communicative competence when they are integrated with reflection, human guidance, and culturally responsive pedagogy. In language and translation contexts, AI expands multilingual access but may also flatten cultural nuance, misrepresent dialects, and produce fluent yet culturally inadequate communication. The review further shows that ethical issues are central rather than secondary. Bias, privacy, transparency, authenticity, disclosure, unequal access, and institutional accountability determine whether AI expands intercultural participation or reinforces dominant linguistic and cultural norms. The study concludes that AI-mediated intercultural communication is best understood as governed co-mediation, in which humans, AI systems, datasets, institutions, interfaces, and audiences jointly shape communicative outcomes. Its main implication is that responsible AI use requires critical AI literacy, cultural sensitivity, human oversight, and ethical governance.