Using Opus 5.5 to discover a new eyewitness record of the dodo

Researchers are using advanced AI models like Opus 5.5 to uncover new historical documents and insights, including a previously-unknown 1615 Dutch eyewitness account of dodo hunting. The process combines human expertise in framing research questions with AI's ability to rapidly search through large archives of historical sources in multiple languages using semantic search, creating a new methodology for historical discovery. While epistemologically unusual, this hybrid approach has proven effective at surfacing primary sources that traditional research methods had missed, as demonstrated by the recent decryption of a Napoleonic-era cipher using GPT-6 Astra.