With the Dodis AI initiative, the Dodis research centre is committed to the scientifically sound, fair and transparent use of artificial intelligence. Dodis actively exploits the advantages of artificial intelligence in various areas. This allows the research group to concentrate on its core tasks: research and quality assurance of its content.
In-house developed tools, LLMs and LVMs, support the transcription process, indexing and summarising of documents that are integrated into the Dodis database. In view of the 18th Conference of the International Committee of Editors of Diplomatic Documents (ICEDD), which will take place in Bern on 3–4 September 2026, Dodis is working intensively on a web service for the automated transcription and indexing of administrative files. Dodis plans to make the web service available to its international partners, thereby making an important contribution to increasing scientific output.
As part of the Metagrid networking initiative, Dodis uses AI algorithms to link research and metadata from more than 35 humanities projects and libraries in Switzerland and abroad. The latest digital tool from the Dodis AI initiative is the Metagrid plugin. This is a browser extension that uses artificial intelligence to recognise, link and display thematically related content from networked websites. Anyone who has installed the Metagrid plugin will automatically receive suggestions with links to related content on the networked sites on the pages of Dodis, APS, HLS, Curia Vista and in the catalogue of the Swiss Federal Archives. The Metagrid-Plugin works on all Chromium-based web browsers (Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Samsung Internet, etc.) and can be downloaded free of charge from the Chrome Web Store: http://dod.is/L3
As part of the SNF project AI-Supported Human-Computer Interaction with Large Volumes of Historical Documents, Dodis is collaborating with the University of Bern and the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland in Fribourg. The research project, led by Prof. Dr. Kaspar Riesen (Pattern Recognition Group, Institute of Computer Science, University of Bern) and Prof. Dr. Andreas Fischer (iCoSys Institute HEIA, HES-SO Fribourg), is dedicated to the computer-assisted analysis of Dodis documents using machine learning and natural language processing. Long-standing Dodis employee Tobias Steiner is responsible for liaising between the SNF project and the Dodis research centre.
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