Napoleon's 1809 Coded Message Cracked by AI After 217 Years

Times of India · technology

A coded military message sent by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1809 remained undeciphered for 217 years due to a lost cypher key. AI engineer Carter Church utilized OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra to reconstruct and decipher the message, revealing French and allied troop positions before Napoleon's war with Austria. The AI processed historical images, cryptographic research, and historical material over several evenings. The breakthrough involved identifying symbols, applying a partial key found by the AI, and using language patterns and computational trial and error to decode the remaining text.