AI Gives the Popol Vuh a New Voice at FILEY 2026

One of the oldest and most sacred texts in Mayan literature just got an unexpected update.

The announcement came on Wednesday during a presentation titled “Presentando el nuevo capítulo de los ebooks,” held as part of FILEY 2026. Lalo Macías, founder of Fíctica, led the event and framed the project as a way to restore something the text originally had but lost when it was written down: its oral nature.

“If the Popol Vuh was born as spoken word, today it can return to dialogue,” Macías said.

Popul Vuh — Fictica, an AI platform that turns books into living experiences, is introduced at FILEY 2026.Photo: Social Media

The Popol Vuh is the Kʼicheʼ Maya creation narrative, written in the Guatemalan highlands in the mid-16th century and considered one of the most significant works of Mesoamerican literature. It recounts the genesis of the world, the adventures of the Hero Twins in the underworld of Xibalbá, and the creation of human beings from corn. For centuries it circulated orally before being transcribed by a Dominican friar and largely forgotten by outsiders until the 19th century.

Fíctica’s platform layers AI-driven interactivity over the text. Rather than replacing scholarly editions, Macías said, it aims to complement them.

“The edition the reader holds is not meant to replace academic versions or correct them. It seeks to dialogue with them,” he said during the presentation. “This ebook proposes a different experience: not just reading the Book of the Council, but conversing with it. Exploring its symbols. Listening to its characters.”

The idea, Macías explained, is to put readers in the driver’s seat. Through what he described as “game loops” — structured interactive sequences — the platform transforms reading from passive consumption into something more participatory. Characters from the text can be engaged directly, and the story can branch based on user choices.

“For the first time, books stop being content consumption and start being interactive,” he said. “Fíctica is the layer of narrative intelligence that, through game loops, turns readers into participants.”

The launch event included readings from fragments of the Popol Vuh by a group that included writer Margarita Robleda, scholar Sara Poot Herrera, and others, each sharing what the text means to them personally.

Filey 2026 runs through Sunday, March 22, at the Centro de Convenciones y Exposiciones Yucatán Siglo XXI in Mérida. Now in its 14th edition and organized by the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, the fair draws more than 250,000 visitors and features hundreds of events across literature, culture, and the arts. This year’s theme is “Penínsulas Lectoras,” a nod to a cultural dialogue between the Yucatán Peninsula and Baja California.

The Fíctica project joins a growing conversation about how technology can serve Indigenous heritage rather than displace it. Similar efforts have emerged across Mexico, including the development of AI tools to assist in reading ancient Maya glyphs and Mayan-language apps aimed at younger generations. What makes Fíctica’s approach distinct is its focus on narrative experience rather than scholarly decipherment — the goal is engagement, not just preservation.

Whether chatting with Hunahpú or navigating the trials of Xibalbá will bring new readers to a 500-year-old text remains to be seen. But for a book that began as a living, breathing story told aloud around fires, the experiment may not be as strange as it sounds.