Overview
- An AI engineer at SentinelOne used OpenAI’s multimodal GPT‑6 Astra to transcribe about 1,300 hand‑drawn signs, locate a prior partial key, run a simulated‑annealing solver and produce a readable translation in roughly six hours, and an independent cryptographer then listed the cipher as solved on Cryptiana.
- The message was sent in 1809 by Eugène de Beauharnais on Napoleon’s instruction to Marshal Auguste de Marmont and reports the locations and strengths of French and Austrian forces along with marching instructions, including the line urging Marmont not to be "intimidated by a few troops or a gathering of rabble."
- Historians say the decoded text largely corroborates material already known from Napoleon’s correspondence and does not overturn the established account of the 1809 campaign.
- Scholars and technologists say the case shows how multimodal AI can speed interdisciplinary historical work by automating image transcription, key‑finding and key search, but they warn it also creates verification, provenance and misuse risks such as wrongly attributed readings or tools that could deanonymize writers.
- The letter helps clarify orders that preceded Marmont’s breakout from Dalmatia and his role at the 1809 Battle of Wagram, and the episode has prompted calls for scholarly vetting and new ethical safeguards before AI methods are applied to other sensitive or undeciphered texts.