ODESIA Challenge 2025 Has a Winner: Continuing to Drive the Advancement of Spanish in AI

Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world, but it remains underrepresented in the development of artificial intelligence, where English dominates most models and applications. Bridging this gap is essential to building more inclusive, useful, and representative technology.

With this mission in mind, the ODESIA Challenge was born, an initiative sponsored by LLYC within the
ODESIA program, which we have promoted together with the UNED, with the aim of reducing the gap between Spanish and English in the development of Artificial Intelligence.

The challenge set an ambitious goal: contestants had to develop a single AI system capable of addressing ten different challenges through an advanced understanding of Spanish. From detecting disabilities in biomedical texts or identifying political propaganda techniques, to characterizing sexism on social media or searching for scientific answers, the teams had to demonstrate the versatility and accuracy of their models. To do so, they had access to training datasets derived from the ODESIA project, designed specifically to refine their proposals.

With more than 25 years of experience in the field of natural language processing, IXA Taldea, formed by Iker García-Ferrero, Machine Learning Researcher at Multiverse Computing, and Rodrigo Agerri, Director of Text Analysis at HITZ (Basque Center for Language Technologies) at the University of the Basque Country, emerged as the winning team in the competition by obtaining the best average score in the 10 tasks, which allowed them to win the €3,000 prize awarded by LLYC as sponsor.

As Miguel Lucas, Global Director of Innovation and member of the jury, pointed out: “We have rewarded those who have developed the most effective model. Through this initiative, we want to encourage the creation of new language models in Spanish, which until now did not exist in the identification of these issues, thus seeking to reduce the technological gap and strengthen the role of Spanish in Artificial Intelligence.”

As additional recognition, the winners participated in the recording of the latest episode of our podcast Esto es lo que AI, a space that allowed them to talk in more depth about their project and share their vision of the role that Spanish will play in the future of AI.

This milestone represents another step toward artificial intelligence that thinks, learns, and evolves in Spanish, driving the development of solutions with a real impact on society and contributing to a more inclusive and representative technological future.