AI cluster cuts newspaper research from 20 years to five days

An AI computing cluster developed under the University of Graz can analyse eight million pages of historical newspapers in five days, a task that would take 30 researchers 20 years, ORF reported.

The Digital Humanities Infrastructure Austria is the country’s first AI infrastructure designed specifically for the humanities and cultural sciences. The project, led by the University of Graz, received more than two million euros in funding from the science ministry.

The shared high-performance cluster serves nine Austrian universities and research institutions. Its graphics processors support AI tools for text recognition, image and text analysis, and language models, allowing researchers to search and evaluate large collections of historical sources more quickly.

Researchers can access the cluster through a browser without specialised hardware or technical expertise. Its language models run at universities through a dedicated interface, so texts, images and other data remain within the academic network, the University of Graz said.