A certain Linda from the English town of Reading threw a message in a bottle into the Thames or the North Sea in 2007, and in 2018, the bottle was found on the German island of Sylt, and to the finders, its content was completely unclear and incomprehensible.
ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence (AI) tools made it possible to decode parts of the letter, but now it is impossible to find Linda, who asked for a reply from whoever found the bottle with the message.
Malte Bayer and his family from the German region of Schwarzwald found the bottle and the letter decorated with drawings of colorful fish, seahorses, and little boats while walking on the beach.
“I managed to understand two words – England and town,” from which it was sent, he said. Then the Bayers stored the found bottle among shells in a basket, as a souvenir from the holiday.
But Bayer’s wife recently reminded him of the bottle and the letter, and since he works in artificial intelligence, he decided to try deciphering once again.
Since he knew that artificial intelligence can also decipher hieroglyphs, Malte discovered the written message: “Whoever finds this, let them write to me”, and then followed the address: 5 Roslin Crescent, Reading, England.
The company, currently headquartered at that address, has no knowledge of Linda. According to the analysis, they believe that when she wrote the message and sent the bottle, the girl was in her early teenage years.
AI expert Michael Hanisch said that scanning and analysis could once again make other old texts understandable and readable.
New “large language models” (LLM) are better when it comes to deciphering context than the old ones, because they see texts and images as the same element. New models are also able to fill in missing parts, said Hanisch.
“When AI once sees a message in a bottle or something similar, it can draw conclusions,” and that includes text and addresses.
