PuntoMedio: Seeking to have artificial intelligence recognize and process the Maya language

Proposal

Seeking to have artificial intelligence recognize and process the Maya language

Text and photos: Andrea Segura

Yucatec Maya reached an international artificial intelligence (AI) research stage through Jaziel Aarón Carballo Tadeo, who presented a proposal in Lisbon, Portugal, to advance the development of technologies capable of processing and recognizing this Indigenous language.

Carballo Tadeo, a PhD candidate in Geospatial Information Sciences at CentroGeo, took part in the 16th Lisbon Machine Learning School (LxMLS 2026), organized by the Instituto Superior Técnico of the University of Lisbon in collaboration with ELLIS, the European network for AI research.

According to the information provided, around 500 people from more than 20 countries applied to the program, of whom only 135 were selected. The Yucatecan researcher was the only Mexican admitted. In addition to taking part in the academic program, his research focused particularly on speech technology and language recognition. To do so, the proposal uses dictionaries and the official orthographic rules of the language as part of the resources for developing models that allow technologies to process it.

The project seeks to help close the technological gap faced by Indigenous languages compared with languages that have greater representation in artificial intelligence systems, with potential applications in speech-recognition tools, digital assistants, and other language-processing technologies.

Carballo Tadeo, a graduate of the Instituto Tecnológico de Mérida, thus brought research centered on the linguistic heritage of the Yucatán Peninsula to one of the international spaces for scientific training in artificial intelligence.

The researcher’s international participation was supported by Yucatán’s Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation (Secihti), led by Mirna Manzanilla Romero, which backed the arrangements needed to facilitate his travel and participation in the gathering held in Portugal.

The proposal argues that the development of new technologies should not only consider languages with greater international presence, but should also incorporate Indigenous languages, with the aim of expanding their presence in the digital environment and contributing to their preservation and use in new technological tools.

Highlights: Jaziel Aarón Carballo Tadeo presented a proposal in Portugal to advance the development of technologies capable of processing and recognizing the Maya language.

Article by Andrea Segura, published in PuntoMedio on August 11, 2026. Translated from the original Spanish for this archive.