Sberbank : Sber AI team becomes part of national Night of Museums

Sber AI presented several projects at the State Historical Museum (SHM) as part of the event, including the Digital Peter platform, designed to recognize Peter the Great's handwriting in his manuscripts.

Digital Peter was created in conjunction with the Russian Historical Society and is a logical follow-up to one of the hackathons organized as part of AI Journey 2020.

Visitors on the Night of Museums had the opportunity to acquaint themselves with the platform and try out the computer vision technology for themselves. They were also able to write a text that the system then displayed in Peter the Great's handwriting.

The opportunity to present the Digital Peter platform at the Russian Historical Society was a particularly valuable one for its designers. We are pleased to see how AI tech is delivering effective, measurable outcomes in the humanities as well. It is symbolic that our project is being launched in 2021, which has been declared the Year of Science and Technology in Russia. We see great potential in this platform and are certain that the documents transcribed with its help will enable researchers to shed light on chapters of history that previously were virtually unexplored.

Alexander Vedyakhin
First Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank

The Digital Peter project is a fitting gift in time for the upcoming 350^th anniversary of the emperor's birth - not only for researchers and everyone interested in our country's history, but also for people who follow the breakthroughs achieved by Russian IT experts. The program is excellent for solving the complex task of deciphering a highly elaborate form of medieval shorthand - the intricate, confusing manuscripts written by the reformer Czar. This is of great help to the few Russian researchers who study this topic. It is even more encouraging that the project was the result of a collaboration between historians and AI tech developers. The innovative solutions created exist thanks to this interdisciplinary approach. We expect the official project website to be launched in the near future. Users will be able to upload an electronic copy of one of Peter the Great's manuscripts and promptly receive a transcription of the text.

Konstantin Mogilevsky
Chairman of the Board, Russian Historical Society; Executive Director, History of the Fatherland Foundation

We are very glad to have served as a platform for the demonstration of such a unique project. Peter the Great left a number of documents behind that he wrote in highly illegible handwriting. The study of the emperor's handwritten legacy could benefit greatly from this project. We envisaged a special interactive feature for museum visitors on the Night of Museums - anyone interested could write a text that would then be converted into Peter the Great's handwriting.

Alexey Levykin
Director, State Historical Museum