Google DeepMind’s new AI can help historians understand ancient Latin inscriptions

MIT Technology Review - AI
Jul 23, 2025 15:00
Peter Hall
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Summary

Google DeepMind has introduced Aeneas, an AI tool designed to analyze and contextualize ancient Latin inscriptions, determining their original time and place. Building on the success of its previous tool, Ithaca, Aeneas demonstrates the growing potential of AI to assist historians in reconstructing and understanding historical texts, highlighting AI’s expanding role in the field of archaeology.

Google DeepMind has unveiled new artificial-intelligence software that could help historians recover the meaning and context behind ancient Latin engravings. Aeneas can analyze words written in long-weathered stone to say when and where they were originally inscribed. It follows Google’s previous archaeological tool Ithaca, which also used deep learning to reconstruct and contextualize ancient text,…