Artificial intelligence deciphers secret code from the Napoleon era

According to ixbt.com, a modern AI model has revealed a historical mystery that remained unsolved for 217 years. A system called GPT-6 Astra fully deciphered and reconstructed the content of a complex secret French code from the era of Napoleon Bonaparte in just six hours. This was reported by Ixbt.com news source.

The document in question is a secret letter sent to French commander Auguste de Marmont in the spring of 1809, approximately two weeks before the Austrian invasion. The document was part of the long-unsolved archive holdings of the Cryptiana research project. The letter consists of 24 lines containing a mix of plain French text, numbers, letters, and special symbols.

Researcher Carter Church disclosed the details of the experiment. According to him, the GPT-6 Astra system was provided with only a photograph of the document and a single prompt. Following this, the neural network independently recognized nearly 1,300 characters in the manuscript over six hours and partially discovered the encryption key from historical sources.

Historical context and automated analysis

To reconstruct the remaining characters, the AI wrote and executed its own algorithm using a mathematical optimization method known as simulated annealing. During the cryptanalysis process, the model studied other correspondence from that period and compared the obtained data with the historical context. Notably, during the work, the AI also identified a potential error in the date within the document itself.

Experts note that this cipher is not considered extremely complex by modern cryptographic standards. However, the main significance of the experiment lies in the complete autonomy of the process. A single system successfully performed the tasks of identifying the ancient manuscript, searching for historical data, conducting cryptanalysis, writing software code, and verifying the result while considering the context of the era.

A new page in history

By decrypting this information, a missing fragment of an order mentioned in Napoleon's memoirs, published in 1865, was also restored. While Napoleon's work stated that the marshal should not be stopped by "a handful of...", it was revealed that in the secret code, this phrase continues with the words "...rabble of a mob."

After the experiment was successfully completed, Cryptiana project expert Satoshi Tomokiyo acknowledged the accuracy of the results. Subsequently, the historical document was officially moved to the category of decrypted and opened archives. The application of such technologies is expected to be a significant step in uncovering mysteries in human history in the future.