A groundbreaking study revealed that artificial intelligence understands Polish commands more accurately than any other language. English, surprisingly, finished only in sixth place. The University of Maryland and Microsoft conducted the research across 26 languages, comparing how major AI systems interpreted identical instructions.
Researchers described the outcome as unexpected. “English didn’t dominate as many assumed,” they noted. “It ranked sixth when analyzing longer texts, while Polish emerged as the most efficient language.” The test included models from OpenAI, Google Gemini, Qwen, Llama, and DeepSeek.
AI Excels in a Language Humans Find Difficult
Polish achieved an average success rate of 88%, making it the most effective language for instructing AI. The Polish Patent Office celebrated the result, stating, “Polish seems hardest for humans but easiest for machines.”
Experts found it remarkable that AI performed so well in Polish despite limited available training data compared with English or Chinese. Chinese, in contrast, ranked near the bottom, finishing fourth from last among all tested languages.
Which Languages AI Understands Best
According to the study, the ten languages AI models understood most accurately were Polish first, followed closely by French, Italian, and Spanish. Russian came next, then English in sixth place, trailed by Ukrainian, Portuguese, German, and Dutch.
Researchers concluded that language complexity doesn’t hinder AI comprehension. In fact, one of the hardest languages for humans to master has become the one machines understand with the greatest precision.
