Computer pioneer Alan Turing, known for his eponymous test, faced a more critical challenge during World War II: cracking the Enigma code used by Nazi Germany. Now, a pair of cryptanalysts have used cutting-edge language models, Astra and Opus, to decode two long-unsolved messages from Enigma machines.

Carter Leffen, a developer, instructed OpenAI’s Astra to search a database of Enigma messages and decode an unbroken message from 2005. After days of research and simulation, the model succeeded, earning Leffen the accolade of creating an interactive website to explain the process.

Frode Weierud, a retired electrical engineer with a lifelong interest in cryptology, validated Leffen’s solution, leaving him in awe. The Astra model’s logs suggest it may have accessed archived messages from a private collection, though Weierud remains uncertain. This feat would have taken a human researcher weeks or months, according to Weierud.

Meanwhile, Jack Willis, a cybersecurity executive, used Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5 model to decode a different unsolved message. Will there be more unsolved Enigma messages, or will AI have solved them all? The race to decode is on, but for now, the final seven messages remain a challenge.