How AI is creating a UK super-museum and revealing our planet's history

Researchers are using AI to create a vast digital museum of millions of specimens from collections across the UK that they say could "supercharge" our understanding of the natural world.

People will eventually be able to see around 70 million animals, plants, fossils and rocks from their phones and computers.

Robots and AI are being used to scan and analyse the specimens - some collected centuries ago - speeding up the digitisation process from hundreds of years to a decade.

The new digital museum will enable researchers to understand how the UK has changed over the entire history of our planet and predict future changes to the climate, food supplies and species loss.

The resource will be something that the public can access and enjoy too, says Dr Joanna Dunster, who is an associate director of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) - part of the UK Research and Innovation Agency which is funding the project.

"I'm looking forward to exploring the resource with my four-year-old son, whose knowledge of science is little, but enthusiasm is great," she told BBC News.

Some specimens are already searchable on the database, but they represent only a fraction of the country's collections, mostly from a handful of large institutions such as the Natural History Museum and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

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