People are now able to walk through the ancient site of Olympia as it stood more than 2,000 years ago, thanks to artificial intelligence. The Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sport and Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday announced'Ancient Olympia: Common Grounds', a new collaboration to digitally preserve and restore ancient Olympia, the original home of the Olympic games, using AI. This digital revival project allows viewers around the world to explore ancient Olympia through an immersive experience via an interactive mobile app, web-based desktop experience, or a Microsoft HoloLens 2 exhibition at the Athens Olympic Museum. "Digitally preserving ancient Olympia gives people a way to walk through the site during one of history's most important periods -- brought to life in a realistic, engaging way that was never before possible. This new form of digital archiving will continue to offer a portal to another era, helping us understand what humanity has achieved in the past and reminding us of what we're capable of today," explains Microsoft in a media release about the new project.

Viewers around the world can see the site of the first ever Olympic Games as it looked in its prime more than 2,000 years ago thanks to a digital reconstruction. 'Ancient Olympia: Common Grounds' stems from collaboration between the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sport and Microsoft's AI for Cultural Heritage initiative. Microsoft teamed with tech firm Iconem to take hundreds of thousands of images of the ancient site as it lies today -- both with ground- and drone-based cameras. These were processed by Microsoft AI to create models so precise they are photo-realistic and from which the ancient monuments could be digitally reconstructed. The first games took place in Olympia in 776 BC, and recurred every four year until at least AD 393 and they perhaps continued until the Temple of Zeus burnt in 425 AD.