How AI is helping to open a new chapter for ancient Chinese literature

For generations, working with ancient Chinese texts has been a painstaking task.

Specialists would spend years deciphering unfamiliar characters, copying manuscripts by hand, adding punctuation to texts written without it, comparing different editions and tracing references scattered across thousands of years of records.

But artificial intelligence (AI) is now changing that process, not only by helping to preserve fragile manuscripts but also by transforming how ancient texts are recovered,...