AI is good at reading ancient documents, and can read the contents of ancient documents just by showing them a photo, and can also handle small details that even experts may not notice.



AI is developing at a tremendous pace, and the use of AI in research is also becoming more active.

Benjamin Breen , a history researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, praised OpenAI's AI for its ability to decipher ancient documents.

The leading AI models are now good historians
https://resobscura.substack.com/p/the-leading-ai-models-are-now-very

Attempts to decipher ancient documents using AI have been underway for several years , but traditional methods required specialized knowledge of AI. However, with the emergence of chat AI such as ChatGPT, even people who are not familiar with AI can now benefit from AI's information processing capabilities. In 2023, it was confirmed that GPT-4 and Claude 2 could recognize the contents of 'pre-transcribed ancient documents.'

GPT-4 and Claude 2 can translate even '16th century Latin magic books', scholars say 'comparable to human professionals' - GIGAZINE



Subsequent AI models such as GPT-4o and OpenAI-o1 have also significantly improved image reading performance. So Breen fed the 'photo of the ancient document' directly into GPT-4o and instructed it to transcribe the contents. As a result, he succeeded in transcribing an ancient document written in 16th century Italy . Although the transcribed text contained some small errors, it was of a quality that could be used for research.



Furthermore, when OpenAI-o1 was fed an image of

an 18th century medical book written in Mexico , it not only succeeded in transcribing the contents, but was also able to perform advanced tasks such as 'analyzing the purpose of the book from its language and content' and 'analyzing the points the author wanted to emphasize from the illustrations.'



In addition, OpenAI-o1 read the illustration of a person on the page as 'a 17th-18th century Spanish gentleman holding a heart medallion on his chest.' According to Breen, it is speculated that what the person is actually holding in his hands is a medical equipment storage box and a urinal. Breen commented, 'OpenAI-o1's guess is wrong, but it is noteworthy that they noticed such small details and started analyzing it.'



In addition, Breen has released GPTs (custom GPTs) that are useful for reading ancient documents.

ChatGPT - The Historian's Friend
https://chatgpt.com/g/g-u5cMhl7RY-the-historian-s-friend



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in Software, Posted by log1o_hf