International
The director of the RAE asks to take care of Spanish in AI so that they do not create their own dialects
The director of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and president of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language (Asale), Santiago Muñoz Machado, called for taking care of the development of artificial intelligence (AI) so that machines speak Spanish in the most correct way possible and at the same time prevent their algorithms from creating digital dialects that would constitute “a great break for the unity of the language”.
“It is important that machines, which are a growing number of non-human individuals who use our language, do so in the best possible way,” Muñoz Machado said in an interview with EFE during the celebration in Quito of the XVII Congress of the Asale, in which issues such as the challenges and opportunities of Spanish in the face of new technologies and the digital world will be discussed.
The Spanish jurist considered that for this there is “a competitive advantage: none of the technology companies that have machines that speak is interested in speaking badly, in the same way that no school or university is interested in having students who do not handle the language well.”
“Large technology companies are not interested in having illiterate people. To help them not have them, what we tell them is that, when they teach the machines to speak Spanish, they use the tools of the language academies, and in that way the machines will speak a language just like that of humans,” explained Muñoz Machado.
Spanish and AI
The director of the RAE admitted that, for the moment, they have not detected major deviations in artificial intelligence, with respect to the canon that the academies establish.
“(But) we must take care of this and that it remains so, because it would be feasible for the algorithms that handle artificial intelligence to determine variations of the language that would ultimately create digital dialects of artificial intelligence, not unintelligible from the common Spanish language,” warned Muñoz Machado.
“That would be a great breakdown of the unity of the language and an unbearable injury to a language that they speak now and with which 600 million people understand. It would be very serious if it happened, but I think there is no will or interest in it happening, not even economically,” he concluded.
In that sense, he emphasized that the scenario that these machines could create languages derived from Spanish, as well as other languages, that only they understood is not science fiction, because “everything that comes out in this matter is happening now.”
AI to detect new words
The jurist, who has directed the RAE since 2018, recalled that in the previous Asale congress, held in 2019 in Seville (Spain), the Spanish Language and Artificial Intelligence (LEIA) project was already created.
“In recent years we have had great revolutions that can affect the tools we use for the general regulation of the language, especially the digital revolution and artificial intelligence. We have opened up to them immediately,” he said.
Thus, they have also seen with AI an opportunity to use this technology to detect new terms and forms of expression that arise and that do not reach them through traditional channels.
The digital revolution has also led to the appearance of new words to name elements or phenomena that did not exist before, most Anglo-Saxon terms that do not generate fear in the academies of the Spanish language.
A mixed language
“It is not a great tragedy because Spanish has always been mestizo, a language very given to incorporating terms from other languages from its origins. He already incorporated many Arabic words and other neighboring languages. And in countries like the Americans it has terms of their original languages,” Muñoz Machado said.
“We’re not too worried. The ‘Dictionary of the Spanish Language’ has 94,000 entries and 189,000 meanings. Every year we incorporate a maximum of a dozen new terms from English, and we also incorporate them raw, without Castilianizing or Spanishizing them, in the same way they mean in English. We enrich the language in that way and nothing happens,” he added.
However, the director of the RAE emphasized that “a different thing is to use English expressions that have equivalent in Spanish only for snobbery or to show a certain knowledge of that culture in an unnecessary and harmful way for the quality and integrity of our language”
At the Asale congress, among other novelties, a ‘Pan-Hispanic Guide to Clear Language’ will also be presented, with the aim that the official communications of the institutions can be understood by any citizen and that they can thus exercise “the right to understand,” as Muñoz Machado defined it, “which is the basis of the exercise of other rights.”
International
French Parliament Moves to Approve Social Media Age Limit for Minors
France’s Parliament is expected to approve legislation on Tuesday banning children under the age of 15 from accessing social media platforms, following an agreement reached Monday between lawmakers on the mechanism to enforce the measure.
The initiative is part of President Emmanuel Macron’s broader effort to strengthen online protections for minors and regulate children’s screen time before the end of his second presidential term in May 2027.
“Tomorrow, France will become the first country in Europe to establish a digital age of majority to better protect our children online,” Digital Affairs Minister Anne Le Hénanff said Monday in a post on X.
If approved, the government plans to implement the restriction in September, when students return to school after the summer holidays.
The United Kingdom has already passed similar legislation restricting social media access for users under the age of 16, although that measure is scheduled to take effect in early 2027.
Both the National Assembly, France’s lower house of Parliament, and the Senate are expected to hold final votes on the legislation Tuesday after a joint committee of seven senators and seven lawmakers reached an agreement on the bill’s final wording.
Under the proposed law, children under 15 years old would be prohibited from accessing online social media services, with limited exceptions for certain platforms, including online encyclopedias.
The legislation would make France the first member of the European Union to introduce a nationwide minimum digital age for access to social media platforms, reflecting a growing international movement to strengthen online safeguards for children and teenagers.
International
WHO to Hold New Round of Talks After Slow Progress on Pandemic Accord
Member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) made limited progress during the seventh session of the Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG) tasked with finalizing a key annex to the global pandemic agreement, prompting negotiators to schedule another round of talks in September.
The session, which opened on July 6 and concluded last week at WHO headquarters in Geneva, focused on drafting and negotiating the annex covering the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) System, a central component of the pandemic accord.
Without the completion of the PABS annex, the global pandemic agreement cannot enter into force.
The annex had originally been expected to be finalized before May 2026, but negotiations have progressed more slowly than anticipated.
In a statement, the WHO said member states “advanced negotiations” on the PABS system while acknowledging that additional discussions are required to complete a framework capable of supporting a faster, more effective and more equitable response to future pandemics.
The organization announced that an eighth round of negotiations will take place on September 14.
Despite the limited progress, delegates succeeded in streamlining the draft text and concentrating discussions on several technical issues.
According to the WHO, negotiators focused on the contractual arrangements underpinning the PABS mechanism, the laboratory networks responsible for handling and sharing pathogens and their genetic sequence data, as well as the framework for distributing the benefits generated through the sharing of those pathogens.
The PABS system is considered one of the most important elements of the future pandemic agreement, as it aims to ensure timely access to pathogens for scientific research while establishing fair mechanisms for sharing the benefits derived from vaccines, diagnostics and other medical countermeasures developed during future global health emergencies.
International
Iran Says It Is in “Full-Scale War” as U.S. Launches Ninth Consecutive Night of Airstrikes
Iran declared on Monday that it is facing a “full-scale war” against the United States after Washington carried out another wave of overnight airstrikes, including attacks near a city that hosts one of the country’s nuclear facilities.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said the country must prepare for the consequences of the ongoing conflict, describing the situation as a broad military confrontation.
“The reality is that today the Islamic Republic of Iran is engaged in a full-scale war,” Pezeshkian said in a statement released by the presidency. “We must be realistic and accept the natural consequences of this resistance.”
The latest U.S. strikes marked the ninth consecutive night of military operations, according to the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which announced the attacks on X.
Since hostilities resumed on July 7, U.S. air operations have expanded well beyond southern Iran, reaching central and northwestern regions of the country, according to local sources.
Local authorities reported that one person was killed and several others injured in Tabriz, in northwestern Iran, more than 1,000 kilometers from the Persian Gulf.
Additional casualties were reported in the nearby city of Urmia, where several people were wounded during separate strikes.
Washington said the attacks targeted military installations. However, Iranian officials accused the United States of striking populated areas, including Bushehr, home to Iran’s only operational nuclear power plant.
Iran also reported that the Darkhovin nuclear facility, which is still under construction, was among the sites hit during the latest attacks.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the renewed military campaign was carried out in honor of American service members killed in recent days.
Two U.S. soldiers died on Friday during attacks on a military base in Jordan, while another service member was killed on Sunday during the controlled disposal of unexploded munitions from an Iranian drone in northern Iraq.
According to U.S. figures, 17 American troops have been killed since the conflict began on February 28.
On the Iranian side, the latest official figures released on Friday reported 50 deaths and more than 500 injuries since fighting resumed earlier this month.
A memorandum of understanding signed by Iran and the United States on June 17, which had been intended to pave the way for peace negotiations, collapsed after hostilities resumed over the strategic control of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important energy shipping routes.
French Parliament Moves to Approve Social Media Age Limit for Minors
WHO to Hold New Round of Talks After Slow Progress on Pandemic Accord
Iran Says It Is in “Full-Scale War” as U.S. Launches Ninth Consecutive Night of Airstrikes
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