An AI-powered inscription chatbot for research, education and cultural mediation
Inscriptions are direct testimonies of real people (from soldiers to officials and craftsmen to families) and provide direct access to life in antiquity. However, they remain difficult for laypeople to understand, and even researchers find it difficult to map complex questions in existing databases.
This is where Vox Lapidum comes in. The project expands the Latin epigraphy database EDCS with automatic annotations and a specialised AI pipeline. These layers of information are linked to images, 3D scans and metadata and can be accessed via a dialogue interface. The result is a chatbot that transforms the static wealth of an inscription database into a living space of knowledge.
Vox Lapidum brings the history of over 500,000 inscriptions and the people behind them to life – for research, education and the general public.
Team
Prof. Dr. Anne Kolb, UZH Historisches Seminar
Charlotte Axelsson, PHZH Zentrum Digital Learning