Microsoft is working on a system that restores lost fragments of code, and digital documents

Microsoft is working on a system that uses AI to restore missing parts of a digital document using only some fragmented parts of that document.

In a paper published recently, the Redmond-based tech giant patented the technology under the name of Automated notebook completion using sequence-to-sequence transformer, and it could be a revolutionary way to restore and remaster older digital documents, such as old video games, for instance, with AI, by being able to restore old fragments of code.

The system can automatically complete parts of a digital notebook by employing the following process. Each digital document has two types of cells: markdown cells, which contain text, and code cells, which contain code.

The system works by creating examples of inputs and outputs. It does this by hiding (or masking) the content of either a markdown cell or a code cell and then using the content of the other cell as an input. The hidden content is used as the output for that example.

After creating these examples, the method trains a natural language processing model (a type of AI that understands and generates text) using these examples. The trained model can then predict the content of a hidden cell based on the content of the other cell, and it comes with several results, which are then tested until one of them resembles the original best.

The method can further include executing the natural language processing model to generate multiple hypotheses of solutions that are consistent with content in the grading cell.

In other words, the system teaches the computer to fill in the blanks in a notebook by showing examples of how the blanks have been filled in before.

While the system can be used in various applications, from language programming courses to restoring digital documents of various natures (the paper mentions Word, Excel, and even PowerPoint documents), in theory, it can also be used to restore old and lost fragments of code, which can potentially become a way to remaster old video games by only using some parts of the code.

This is a sort of an unfortunate issue in the gaming industry: for instance, back in 2014, when Ubisoft announced the release of the HD version of the popular Heroes of Might and Magic 3, the company said it would only release one edition of the game because it didn’t have all the original code of the complete edition.

This was quite unfortunate because the company found some fragments of the original code, but it was rendered unusable. However, with a tool like this system, those fragments could be used to restore the original code entirely.

Given how much focus Microsoft is putting into AI development, this system might actually be released sooner or later, depending on how accurate AI is. But with Copilot in GitHub being able to assist programmers, the system can actually be released in a few years.