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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Ubisoft pledge to make hieroglyph translation algorithm open access [rockpapershotgun.com]

During development [of Assassin's Creed Origins], [Ubisoft] partnered with Egyptologists, and in doing so they apparently discovered that translating hieroglyphs is very difficult and time consuming. In response, they started looking into ways to streamline the process using machine learning, and this week, they presented their initial progress.

[...] Ubisoft's first step was asking for volunteers to trace hieroglyphs on their website [ubi.com], and Assassin's Creed fans were well up for it – "more than 80,000 glyphs were drawn in the tool" on the first night it was active.

[...] Now they've got the basics in place, they've pledged to bring the algorithm into open access by the end of the year, so that academics can both use it and help them to improve it. They're taking the drawing tool and reworking it as a teaching tool for students learning the hieroglyphic script, too.

Ubisoft, Google Cloud and Psycle demonstrate the power of machine learning, lay the ground for automated hieroglyphics translation [ubi.com]

The support of Academic contributors around the world has helped shape the Hieroglyphics Initiative. However it is only starting and now requires the contribution of the scientific community to deliver its full promise, therefore the data and tools will open source before the end of the year.

[...] Ubisoft will keep supporting the Hieroglyphics Initiative on the longer term in collaboration with Google Cloud teams as both hope for it to have a long-lasting legacy, and be the basis for more innovations in the study of Middle Egyptian.

2017 video [youtube.com] (2m45s).

Original Submission