When I think about AI search, I realize it’s more than just translating or localizing results. It’s about deciding which sources, narratives, and realities emerge on top. This complex system is incredibly fascinating to me, especially when I consider how multilingual regions like Catalonia challenge these AI search systems.
The unique geography of Catalonia, where Catalan and Spanish languages coexist, serves as an excellent stress test for AI technology. It’s intriguing to see the underlying patterns unfold when the same queries are entered in both languages across platforms like Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT.
In Catalonia, a query like Tradicions de Sant Jordi shows how AI systems can sometimes misidentify the language, often tagging Catalan as Occitan. This discovery was both surprising and revealing, shedding light on broader problems that transcend multilingual spaces.
Consider this: an AI system operating out of Barcelona with a local IP may choose the less prevalent language of Occitan over Catalan, a decision that feels bizarre given Catalonia’s linguistic and geographical context.
This issue isn’t isolated. In January 2023, Google acknowledged downgrading Catalan results in favor of Spanish, which sparked dissatisfaction among users. The subsequent updates improved things somewhat, but the root language-identification errors persist, affecting how AI synthesizes information today.
My journey into this topic has involved documenting AI search variations across Hispanic markets, observing how it often treats diverse Spanish-speaking regions as uniform, ignoring their unique contexts. However, in Catalonia, where geography remains constant, the retrieval patterns unfold in more distinct and educational ways.
For me, multilingual regions expose the foundational defaults in retrieval systems. Here, users can switch languages and observe firsthand how the system reallocates meaning, authority, and even the language of an answer.
The reality is, the same issues will likely emerge in seemingly monolingual markets, manifesting in different ways as AI technology advances.
Inspired by this post on Search Engine Land.
