AI-assisted online tool helps decipher China's oracle bone characters

ZHENGZHOU, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese oracle bone script research institute has teamed up with the country's leading artificial intelligence (AI) technology labs to build an online AI tool to help both the public and researchers decipher oracle bone characters.

The project was jointly launched on Wednesday in the city of Anyang, central China's Henan Province, by Anyang Normal University, Chinese tech giant Tencent and the AI research institute of Xiamen University. More than 160,000 oracle bone inscriptions have been excavated in Anyang since the Yinxu ruins were discovered in 1899. These relics are now in collections scattered across both China and abroad.

Via this cooperation initiative, the new AI system has integrated two main models of DeepSeek and Tencent's Hunyuan, as well as nearly 10 other auxiliary models. This AI tool can answer user queries by recognizing an image of an oracle bone character and interpreting it.

"We have built by far the world's largest multimodal dataset of oracle bone inscriptions, which includes data for 1.43 million ideographic characters, 15,000 pieces of multimodal oracle bone data and 3,000 research papers," said Liu Yongge, director of the key laboratory for oracle bone information processing at Anyang Normal University.

The platform is not only able to help enhance research efficiency for those who do serious research concerning these ancient characters, but can also assist ordinary users keen to obtain interesting knowledge related to oracle bone scripts, via a mini-program on the instant messaging platform WeChat.

Song Zhenhao, with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who is a renowned oracle bone script expert, said China's research on oracle bone inscriptions has entered a new phase -- featuring integration of liberal arts and sciences, and the gathering of interdisciplinary talents, including oracle bone scholars and the computer technology elite.

Oracle bone inscriptions, or Jiaguwen, are an ancient Chinese language named for their inscriptions on tortoise shells and animal bones. They are a primitive form of Chinese characters and the oldest fully-developed characters in China.

The digitalization of oracle bone script research will lead to "practical application of achievements," Song said.