historical cryptography

Artificial intelligence has deciphered a Napoleonic-era encrypted letter that had gone unread for more than 200 years, reportedly cracking the code in about six hours. The breakthrough is drawing wide attention online, though some commenters note the human effort behind both the original cipher and the years of groundwork that made the AI solution possible.

OpenAI's GPT-6, reportedly named Astra, has cracked a 217-year-old encrypted Napoleonic document in just six hours from a single prompt. The AI deciphered 24 rows of custom symbols from one image, revealing lost French troop orders that had resisted decryption for over two centuries.

Researchers have used open source AI tools to crack previously unreadable Cold War-era archival material, reportedly achieving zero modifications across 220 cryptographic symbols and marking multiple breakthroughs in historical cryptography. The work shows how modern machine learning is being applied to declassified documents, helping historians recover intelligence communications that resisted decryption for decades.