AI helps reconstruct damaged Latin inscriptions from the Roman Empire

Latin inscriptions from the ancient world can tell us about Roman emperors' decrees and enslaved people's thoughts – if we can read them. Now an artificial intelligence tool is helping historians reconstruct the often fragmentary texts. It can even accurately predict when and where in the Roman Empire a given inscription came from. "Studying history through inscriptions is like solving a gigantic jigsaw puzzle, only this is tens of thousands of pieces more than normal," said Thea Sommerschield at the University of Nottingham in the UK, during a press event. "And 90 per cent of them are missing because that's all that survived for us over the centuries."