Ancient History Professor Creates Period-Correct AI Image Generator (petapixel.com)

University of Zurich ancient historian Felix K. Maier and computer linguist Phillip Ströbel announced "Re‑Experiencing History," an AI image generator fine‑tuned to produce period‑correct visualizations of Rome and Ancient Greece. Instead of relying on generic web images, the system is trained on academic literature and ancient sources and synthesizes outputs from three different image generators to reduce the kind of anachronisms typical of off‑the‑shelf models (an early test famously showed a Roman procession with spectators filming on smartphones). It exposes users to a prompt interface so scholars, students and museum professionals can craft historically grounded scenes. For the AI/ML community this project highlights the power and challenge of domain‑specific fine‑tuning, curated corpora and multi‑model fusion to combat dataset bleed‑through and cultural anachronisms. The work underscores practical issues: constructing reliable historical training sets, evaluating authenticity, and balancing creative freedom with scholarly accuracy. Currently available only to UZH staff and students, the team plans wider release and envisions educational use (interactive lessons, museum exhibits, documentary previsualization). Re‑Experiencing History is a concrete example of how targeted training and interdisciplinary collaboration can produce more trustworthy generative tools for niche, high‑fidelity applications.