<![CDATA[The rapid emergence of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly large language models (LLMs), in language education is frequently discussed in terms of effectiveness alone. This article offers a theoretically grounded critical evaluation based on key principles of the Communicative Approach, including authentic communication, communicative competence, interaction, production, willingness to communicate, affective dimensions, socioculturally mediated communication, and critical pedagogy. It argues that LLMs create new opportunities for implementing communicative language teaching by expanding interaction, feedback, learner output, and access to language resources. However, these technologies simultaneously constrain the fundamental aims of the communicative approach because they only simulate, rather than genuinely embody, the social, intersubjective, and intentional dimensions of communicative competence. These limitations are therefore structural rather than incidental. Accordingly, the article neither promotes uncritical technological optimism nor rejects educational technology altogether. Instead, it advocates a critically mediated use of AI in which educators function as curators of authenticity and stewards of critical literacy. Conceptually, the article reframes the AI debate in language education from a question of effectiveness to one of communicative theory, using Communicative Language Teaching as an evaluative lens to identify both its contributions and inherent contradictions.]]>
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