Google DeepMind's Aeneas is a groundbreaking AI tool designed to help historians decipher and understand ancient Latin inscriptions. This machine learning system can restore damaged texts, date inscriptions, and pinpoint their geographic origins within the Roman Empire. Aeneas is trained on a vast database of nearly 176,000 Latin inscriptions, allowing it to identify patterns and connections that might elude human researchers.
The AI model uses a combination of textual and visual analysis to restore missing text, date inscriptions, and identify geographic origins. Aeneas can fill gaps in damaged inscriptions with up to 73% accuracy for gaps of up to 10 Latin characters. It can also estimate the date of an inscription to within 13 years of the correct answer and pinpoint the Roman province of origin with 72% accuracy across 62 provinces.
Aeneas has the potential to revolutionize the field of epigraphy by saving historians time, improving accuracy, and discovering new connections. Historians can use Aeneas to quickly analyze vast amounts of data and identify relevant parallels. The AI model's predictions can help historians date and locate inscriptions more accurately. Additionally, Aeneas can identify connections between inscriptions that might have gone unnoticed by human researchers.
The developers of Aeneas hope to extend its capabilities to other ancient languages and scripts, potentially transforming the study of fragmentary evidence across civilizations. The tool is now freely available online, allowing historians, students, and museums worldwide to benefit from its capabilities. With Aeneas, researchers can gain new insights into the ancient world and uncover hidden connections that can shed new light on history.
