'Halis Sefaradi': critical authenticity and the voice of the first Ladino chatbot 'Estreyika'
Authors
Alejandro Acero Ayuda, Carlos Yebra LópezKey Information
Journal
Published in Vol. 4 No. 1 (2026) of AI-Linguistica. Linguistic Studies on AI-Generated Texts and Discourses.
AI-Linguistica. Linguistic Studies on AI-Generated Texts and Discourses is a new scholarly journal aiming at providing a publishing plateform for researchers from all areas of Linguistics (interfacing with neighboring fields: Communication Science, Media and Journalism Studies, Computational Linguistics) to reflect on generated texts from a variety of perspectives: theoretical, descriptive, and applied.
We understand ‘generated texts’ in a broad sense, including formats as diverse as texts generated by Large Language Models, AI-powered smart agents (i.e. chatbots, voice assistants, social bots etc.), writing assistance tools, template-based software, and neural machine translation services.
About the JournalAbstract
As the first Ladino-speaking chatbot intended to support language revitalization, Estreyika inhabits a complex ideological space where authenticity is constructed, contested, and operationalized through cultural, sociolinguistic, and political dynamics anchored in the lived realities of the last speakers of the endangered language Ladino: a Romance language of Ibero-Ottoman origin, preserved by the Sephardic diaspora for over 500 years, now considered severely endangered by UNESCO. In this short article, we argue that Estreyika functions as a site for negotiating performative ‘authenticity’, shaped by the learners’ positionalities—whether as heritage language learners, descendants of Ladino-speaking communities, or so-called ‘cultural outsiders’. Their linguistic performances become acts of alignment or resistance within a discursive field that privileges certain registers, geographies, or orthographies. By exploring Estreyika as a socio-political artifact, this paper advocates for an understanding of authenticity rooted in multiplicity, reflexivity, and critical positionality—a counter-narrative toward more inclusive LLMs critically attuned to AI-human partnerships.
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