The Vesuvius Challenge, a public competition launched in 2023, aims to decipher ancient scrolls from Herculaneum’s Villa dei Papiri using artificial intelligence (AI).

Previous attempts to unroll and scan the scrolls were unsuccessful due to their damage and the undetectable ink.

The Vesuvius Challenge aims to develop an AI model that can reconstruct the ink and make the text readable.

Contestants like Luke Farritor have made significant progress by using AI to identify crackle patterns and train their machine-learning models to reconstruct the text.

The first letters have been discovered and contestants are now competing to produce four separate passages to win the grand prize.

The challenge offers hope for deciphering the ancient texts and preserving their contents from extinction.