Google DeepMind launches AI model to decipher ancient languages

Google's AI team DeepMind has just introduced a new AI model to help historians gain a deeper understanding of ancient texts. Named Aeneas, it is the world's first AI model capable of analyzing the context of ancient inscriptions.

In a blog post, DeepMind explains that Aeneas helps historians do a variety of difficult tasks, such as:

1. Decoding, Originating and Recovering Fragmented Ancient Texts
2. Search for text similar in wording, syntax, or standardized formulas in thousands of Latin inscriptions
3. Handling multimodal input and filling gaps in text

This AI model is currently trained primarily on Latin, but can be applied to other ancient languages and texts. While historians often have to rely on specialized expertise and documents to compare texts, Aeneas can automate this process, saving significant time.

From Ithaca to Aeneas: AI 'exploring' history

Aeneas is named after the hero in Greco-Roman mythology, following the success of Ithaca – DeepMind's previous AI model that specialized in deciphering ancient Greek writing.

"Aeneas goes a step further, helping historians interpret, contextualize texts, make sense of disparate fragments, and paint a more complete picture of ancient history."

The model turns each text into a 'historical fingerprint,' including information about its content, language, origin, and connections to other inscriptions. It discovers deep links that help locate the text in its broader context. Aeneas' training data includes more than 176,000 Latin inscriptions, the result of decades of work by historians.

Outstanding performance & practical application

According to DeepMind, Aeneas outperforms other general-purpose AI models when classifying text by date. Currently, the interactive version of Aeneas is open for free to the following three groups of people:

1. Researcher
2. Students & Teachers
3. Museum expert

The source code and dataset are also publicly available on DeepMind's GitHub .

Aeneas is one of several Google AI tools focused on heritage preservation. Earlier this month, the company also updated Woolaroo, an experimental tool that helps users learn endangered indigenous languages.