AI Austria monthly: April'24 Update
TEDAI coming to Vienna, Int'l startup survey, events, jobs & much more
After enjoying a short easter break, the AI landscape is up and running again. The regulatory buzz is simmering behind the scenes, the spotlight focus shifted to implementation and new developments and the release of new generative AI tools,
🚀 Latest Developments
🤖 TEDAI Vienna: Europe’s first ever TED Talks event exploring ideas at the forefronts of AI innovation
TEDAI Vienna, the first TED Talks conference in Europe dedicated exclusively to the exploration of Artificial Intelligence (AI), is set to take place from October 17-19, in Vienna, Austria. This special event promises to offer a unique exploration into the AI landscape in Europe and beyond, celebrating a shared future that is liberated, not limited by technology. The program will be unveiled in May. » For exclusive updates and sneak peeks ahead of the official announcement join the TEDAI Vienna waitlist
🎤 Interview with AI advisory board members Horst Bischoff & Jeanette Gorzala
The interview touched on a number of important issues and provides a nuanced view on: The importance of adapting to AI advancements without relying on prohibitions, the critical view of the monopolistic tendencies in the AI market, especially concerning Microsoft and OpenAI, and the suggestion that Austria could benefit from its own GPU clusters to foster local AI development, reducing reliance on major US cloud providers » link to the full interview
🎙️ Podcast #2: Interview with Johannes Brandstetter from NXAI
Johannes Brandstetter, the Head of Research (AI4Simulation) at NXAI, discussing his journey and current work in the field of AI. Highlights include Brandstetter's academic roots at Linz's JKU, his tenure at Microsoft, and his return to contribute to the local ecosystem. » listen to the full podcast here
📈 Event Announcement: Data-Driven VC Summit 2024
Andre Retterath, Partner at Earlybird Ventures and writer of the immensely succcessful newsletter datadriven VC (highly recommend to anybody with even a remote interest in venture capital related topics) will host his first online conference. Join the 4-day virtual summit to learn how leading venture capital (VC) investors leverage data and artificial intelligence (AI) to become more productive. » more information and free registration
📣 Call for applicants
📝 AI Startup Survey (BU/NYU)
NYU Stern and Boston University are partnering with HEC Paris and Oxford on the 6th Annual Survey of AI Startups. AI products are now present across all sectors of the economy, and startups are helping to drive this progress! However, AI-focused entrepreneurs face many issues when developing their products, such as access to training data, compliance with ever-evolving regulations, and developing fairer and less biased algorithms.
If you are leading an AI startup, please spend 12 minutes responding to this survey to help them learn more about how AI startups navigate these uncharted waters. You will, of course, have early access to the results. » Here’s the link to the survey.
✨ Generative AI News ✨
👉 Microsoft has forged a multiyear partnership with Mistral, a French AI startup, acquiring a minority stake in the company known for developing large language models similar to ChatGPT. This collaboration will introduce Mistral's AI models to Microsoft's Azure cloud service, making them the second provider of LLMs on Azure after OpenAI. Azure users will soon access Mistral's latest "Mistral Large" model, with future AI models to be trained and deployed on Microsoft's infrastructure. The Paris-based startup, with a recent $415 million funding round, is now valued at $2 billion.
👉 Alphabet's stock fell by 4.5%, its second-largest drop in a year, due to controversy surrounding its Gemini chatbot, leading to a $70 billion market value loss. The backlash was due to Gemini's image generator producing racially insensitive images. Google has paused Gemini's people-image generation feature and is working on updates, with a re-launch expected in a few weeks. The controversy extended to Gemini's text generation capabilities, prompting Google to address these issues promptly.
👉 Apple is set to announce new generative AI functionalities for iPhones and other devices at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) starting June 10, featuring updates across its operating systems, including iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.
👉 A New Orleans man alleges he was paid by a consultant for Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Dean Phillips to create an AI-generated robocall impersonating Joe Biden, targeting New Hampshire voters to discourage them from voting. Using ElevenLabs software, he produced the imitation voice in less than 20 minutes for $150. The incident, potentially illegal, has prompted investigations and a U.S. ban on AI-voiced robocalls. Neither the man nor the consultant has been targeted in these investigations.
👉 Generative AI represents the most significant technological shift in the creative sector in three decades, sparking debates on intellectual property and copyright management. A pioneering study by Goldmedia for GEMA and SACEM has now explored how generative AI is reshaping the music industry in Germany and France, with findings available on this page.
👉 A letter from the Artist Rights Alliance, endorsed by over 200 influential musicians including Billie Eilish, Stevie Wonder, Sheryl Crow, Nicki Minaj, Pearl Jam, Camila Cabello, and Smokey Robinson, has been released urging tech companies to cease the development of AI music technologies that infringe on and undermine the rights of human creators.
👉 The launch of Suno V3 introduces a groundbreaking tool that enables anyone to create complete two-minute songs within seconds. This controversial yet innovative technology aims to make music creation accessible to all, regardless of musical expertise, democratizing the process. Listen to example here.
👉 OpenAI has introduced Voice Engine, an advanced voice cloning technology capable of imitating a person's voice from just a 15-second audio clip. However, due to concerns over misuse, especially in the context of elections, its public release is currently on hold.
👉 OpenAI's ChatGPT now features a long-term memory, allowing it to remember user details across conversations for more personalized interactions. This opt-in feature, part of both free and paid versions, enhances conversational relevance by recalling preferences and specifics. Users can delete their data anytime, and sensitive information is not automatically stored. Despite enhancing user experience, this raises privacy and data handling concerns.
🌏 Asia spotlight
Bytedance introduced: RealCustom. Narrowing Real Text Word for Real-Time Open-Domain Text-to-Image Customization for content creation.
India reverses it’s AI stance, which would have required government approval for foundation model launches.
China is offering AI Startups "compute vouchers" to address the barrier of high compute costs.
Alibaba is leading a $600M+ round in large-scale AI model startup MiniMax, boosting valuation to $2.5B+. The investment marks Alibaba's 2nd major investment in AI this year after its $1B round in Moonshot AI.
📆 Upcoming Events
Apr 10 Innovation Briefing: Excite - AI for Executives
Apr 11 AI-zapft is! KLAGENFURT STAMMTISCH
Apr 11 Expanded World: D#A meets XR Vienna
Apr 12 Social Artificial Intelligence Night (SAINT)
Apr 17 Data & AI Meetup: GenAI
Apr 18 VDSG: LLM Deep dive: Part 1
Apr 23 Workshop - Understanding and Applying AI & LLMs
Apr 25 WiDS Villach 2024
Apr 25 IRI§24-ReMeP Workshop "Haftung für KI"
Apr 29 Vienna Conference on Autonomous Weapon Systems
Apr 30 AI meets Life Sciences: Novel Approaches to Healthcare and Drug Development
👉 For more information on upcoming events head over to our community calendar.
🧑💻 Featured Jobs
Once a month we feature selected openings from our job board in this section.
Project Manager aws AI-Marketplace (aws KI-Marktplatz) at AWS
Big Data Engineer (w/m/d) - Fokus AI, Sales and Key Account Manager SaaS (w/m/d) - Fokus AI, Technical Product Owner/ Project Manager (w/m/d) - Fokus AI, (Senior) Data Scientist (w/m/d) - Fokus AI at Craftworks
PostDoc for AI in Environmental Simulation for Climate-Adapted Planning at VRVIS
Head of Research Unit – Embedded AI (f/m/d) at Silicon Austria Labs
Technical Co-Founder: Senior Machine Learning/Computer Vision Specialist at Play tracks
👉 Check out further listings at our Job Board