New Chatbot Unlocks Secrets in Ancient Greek Records

Researchers developed a large language model, Apollo, to fill gaps in ancient Greek papyrus fragments.

Researchers have developed a large language model named Apollo to assist in deciphering damaged ancient Greek papyrus fragments. This AI model aims to uncover new details about ancient life by filling in missing words or phrases in these tattered records. The Austrian Academy of Science, in collaboration with French AI lab Mistral and technology services firm Sail Reply, will release this model, which is described as the world’s first advanced large language model for Ancient Greek.

Apollo was trained on approximately 600 million historical Greek words sourced from manuscripts, papyri, and inscriptions. It will be made freely available to academics through a chatbot interface. The model is designed to propose statistically likely words or passages to fill in blanks, helping scholars identify relevant fragments and potential new research avenues. This process was previously a laborious task requiring highly specialized academic knowledge.

While Apollo is not expected to reveal major new historical events, it could uncover new details about daily life in antiquity and substantiate existing scholarly assumptions. The model's ability to adapt to different Greek dialects and historical contexts is a key feature. If successful, the technique could be applied to other ancient languages or academic disciplines benefiting from large corpus distillation and indexing.

Find the right AI tool for your business

Chat with Insta and get matched to the right tool in seconds.