A fragment of a bronze military diploma from Sardinia, issued by the emperor Trajan to a sailor on a warship, as restored by Aeneas. If you believe the hype, generative artificial intelligence (AI) is the future. However, new research suggests the technology may also improve our understanding of the past. A team of computer scientists from Google DeepMind, working with classicists and archaeologists from universities in the United Kingdom and Greece, described a new machine-learning system designed to help experts to understand ancient Latin inscriptions. Named Aeneas (after the mythical hero of Rome's foundation epic), the system is a generative neural network designed to provide context for Latin inscriptions written between the 7th century BCE and the 8th century CE.

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."