AI model deciphers 108-year-old WW1 radio message

A model called ChatGPT-6 Astra was able to read an encrypted radio message from German military personnel sent in November 1918. The developer, who goes by the nickname Prinz, reported on the successful experiment.

The ciphertext was on a list of 50 undeciphered ciphers on the Scienceblogs.de portal of scientific blogs and was encoded with the ADFGVX cipher. Decryption was performed using the keyword TRUPPENVERSCHIEBUNG, which was already mentioned in open historical sources, so the artificial intelligence did not crack the key from scratch.

The restored text reports on the arrival of a British cruiser in Sevastopol, as well as the following of an allied squadron on November 26, 1918. The content was compared with the logs of the British cruiser HMS Canterbury: they recorded the arrival of the ship in the port on November 24, 1918, and the allied formation on November 26.

As the developer explains, the message could not be deciphered earlier because researchers believed that the specified key was only used starting from December 9, 1918, while the radiogram is dated November 29. An independent verification by cryptographers to confirm the result has not been carried out yet.