Google DeepMind’s new AI can help historians understand ancient Latin inscriptions
1 min read
Summary
Google’s DeepMind division has launched Aeneas, an AI historian that analyses weathered inscriptions in order to help academics restore the meaning and context of ancient Latin engravings.
Aeneas cross-references partial transcriptions of an inscription with a database of around 150,000 inscriptions originating from locations as far apart as Britain and Iraq.
It then provides historians with potential dates and places of origin for engravings, as well as words that may complete partial inscriptions or sentences.
Aeneas’s deep neural network was trained using a database of around 3,000 inscribed images, which is a small number compared with general-purpose large language models like Google’s Gemini.
However, DeepMind believes Aeneas could help historians “connect the past” and integrate historian workflows.