I am currently working on an in-depth essay about the life and work of Disney's first merchandising representative in the Nordics and in Mexico and Central America, Robert Hartman. Hartman spoke at least three languages fluently (including German and Danish) and his correspondence and diaries used to be tricky to decipher.

Tricky, that is, until the advent of AI. Google's Gemini has become a close collaborator over the past few days and I am really blown away by what it can do. 

This is a example of a page in German, written in cursive, that Gemini was able to transcribe and translate in the blink of an eye. 

We are light years away from the very basic OCR tools that we had at our disposal until only recently, not to mention from the old version of Google Translate.

Truly stunning stuff.