OpenAI’s model completed the task after being fed just a single image and prompt.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works .
I used GPT-6 Astra to break an unsolved cipher to one of Napoleon's generals that had gone unread for 217 years.
What makes this impressive isn't actually the codebreaking, but that Astra completed the entire multi-modal workflow in ~6 hours from a single image and goal.
1/6🧵 https://t.co/vyiGKOsrHq September 30, 2026
The message that was deciphered wasn’t directly from Napoleon. It actually came from the headquarters of Eugène de Beauharnais, Viceroy of Italy (Napoleon’s stepson), but isn’t signed by any particular individual. In can be summed up as a troop briefing, sent to French General Auguste de Marmont, relaying Napoleon's orders. Marmont would have deciphered it using some official military codebook from the era, but since that date in 1809, it is unlikely anyone has read the message again.
Interestingly, Church observes that this freshly deciphered text fills in some missing context from Napoleon’s 1865 memoir. That tome includes part of Napoleon’s order relating to preparation for the Austrian invasion, but breaks off mid-sentence, saying Marmont mustn't be held back by "a handful of …" This page from Cryptiana's Unsolved Historical Ciphers completes this sentence with “a gathering of rabble.”
As per Church’s commentary on the encoded letter to Marshal Marmont, the page begins with a plain text introductory line (in French of course), This is followed by 24 rows of numbers, letters and invented symbols. Astra made short work of this 19 th century military secret, and in approximately six hours, all was revealed. One of the clues it used to solve the cipher was a partial key previously unconnected with this letter. Eventually its multi-modal processing “cracked the rest with its own simulated-annealing solver,” says Church.
If you are in any doubt about the veracity of Astra’s work, this freshly deciphered letter from Cryptiana's Unsolved Historical Ciphers has now been marked as solved by Satoshi Tomokiyo, who maintains that online database. Moreover, Carter explains the solution is “mechanically testable against the ciphertext,” and you can check that using the published solution package, linked in the intro.
ChatGPT-6 Astra cracks 85-year-old 1941 Enigma-coded message in two days
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/chatgpt-6-astra-cracks-217-year-old-napoleonic-code-in-just-six-hours-single-prompt-ai-run-solves-24-rows-of-custom-symbols-from-a-single-image-reveals-lost-troop-orders#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com/membership
- Former OpenAI safety employee says company’s safety culture is broken
- Microsoft using wetlands and native gardens to 'camouflage' 20-plus data center sites by blending them into nature
- AI agents use 5x more tokens than humans as cached prompts explode, headed for 10x
- Portable Bluetooth CD player has a glow-in-the-dark transparent green finish, modern features
- Google freezes open-source bug bounty program amid flood of invalid AI slop submissions
Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.