Researchers use AI to translate text found on ancient clay tablets

Scientists at the University of Chicago are developing a machine learning system that can automatically transcribe text found on ancient clay tablets. The DeepScribe system will initially focus on transcribing the Cuneiform writing system used in the ancient Iranian Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC), the University of Chicago News reports. Existing computer systems struggle to translate this script, due to its complex characters and the 3D form of the tablets on which they're written. The team of researchers from the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute and its Department of Computer Science thinks their system could do better. To build the model, they're training it on more than 6,000 annotated images from the Persepolis Fortification Archive.