Trough its recent acquisition of Quidum Resources, Freeport controls the Star Mountains copper-gold project in Papua New Guinea project, 25 kilometres from the OK Tedi openpit mine.

The company said it will apply the technology to the project to enhance the next phases of exploration there.

Freeport senior vice president of operations Nate Chutas said: "We believe that the advances in technology that DRIVER brings will provide deep insights into our project data and provide a better understanding for the development and prioritization of high-quality exploration targets."

DRIVER evaluates all the elements typically returned by modern laboratories, not simply the elements of direct economic interest. This is too time-consuming and complicated to be carried out by project geologists, Freeport said.

Minerva's cognitive reasoning platform then compares the identified geochemical exploration specifics to its database of hundreds of active and disused mines around the world and identifies those most similar to the explored target using proprietary AI technology. 

The resulting similarity rankings can then provide reliable, explainable models on which geologists can build exploration strategies.

"Despite having identified a very significant resource already, it is our assertion that Star Mountains is still vastly under-explored" said Freeport president and chief executive Gord Friesen. "We believe that utilizing AI-based, deep-thinking tools such as DRIVER will exponentially hasten our understanding of Star Mountains' true potential."