AI Austria monthly: February Update

Creative AI made in Austria, impact of European AI act on startups and companies, new grant programs, RL Community and many more topics.

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Feb 3

Generative AI and regulation remain the defining topics at the beginning of this year. Especially ChatGPT and its high adoption (reaching 100 million monthly active users / 13 million daily active users in January 2023) led to public excitement, new events and community formats.

With the ‘AI Inspiration Night’ we co-launched a new quarterly event series, which aims to show AI applications at the intersection of art, creativity and technology. Furthermore, we received the first submissions for our generative AI showcase. If you are working on an exciting project in that area scroll down below for the details and get in touch with us!

🇦🇹 How the European AI Act will shape the startup landscape - Video Interview

We were interviewed by DerBrutkasten on the expected impact of the AI act on companies and startups, as well as the current state of regulation.

A few key findings:

With the ongoing releases of impressing large generative AI models (LGAIMs), the way we create is undergoing fundamental change and more is to come. LGAIMs are a catalyst for new products and services based on these impressive large scale and creative enablers.
Startups in the AI-field are confronted with addressing their risk classification under the AI Act in fundraising. Good preparation is half of the pie - proactively communicate your risk status and measures towards investors and funding agencies to mitigate hesitation due to the regulation and show that you are on top of the developments and a good investment target.
Work on the AI Act is progressing and is expected to continue still this year due to the complexity of the topic. Additionally, two regulatory proposals addressing and partly clarifying liability for software in general, and for AI systems in particular have been released. The European Union is building a comprehensive framework for AI considering various aspects, also liability and with an international AI Treaty in the making also globalization. In the view of this task, regulations might be passed rather 2023/2024 due to intensive discussions.

💶 New Grant programs

Austria Wirtschaftsservice, the promotional bank of Austria, launched 3 new AI grants on February 1: AI-Start, AI-Adoption, and AI-Wissen. Applications are due by the end of March! "AI-Start" provides first-time AI projects for SMEs with up to EUR 15,000 in support - applications have to include an offer from a potential implementation partner (that can be found on the aws AI marketplace). "AI-Adoption" supports innovative and trustworthy AI projects with a focus on preparing for upcoming European regulations, standards, norms, and certifications in the field of AI, with up to EUR 150,000 available per company. "AI-Wissen" aims to build knowledge for companies in AI data strategy and AI business and innovation protection strategy with up to EUR 20,000 in grants for innovation consulting services with a maximum of 20 hours. Needless to say, for all grants the applying company must be located in Austria. The grants can be applied for now through the aws funding manager, and more information about each program can be found at www.aws.at/ai-mission-austria - attention, there is also a live online info hour on Friday February 3 - register here.

Reinforcement Learning Community

Our RL community turns 3 this month. To celebrate the occasion we created a new subpage which introduces the masterminds behind the community, as well as explains its goals and vision. If you want to get in touch just send an email at RL@aiaustria.com.

🧑‍💻 SymbolicAI: A new framework to bridge the gap from generative to symbolic AI.

SymbolicAI is an exciting new framework which combines the strengths of symbolic artificial intelligence and large language models (LLMs). They present a novel concept how to mitigate the limited context size of LLMs, and how we can close the gap between classical programming (Software 1.0) and differentiable programming (Software 2.0). Furthermore, they showcase a diverse set of applications, including fact-based generation of text, causal reasoning capabilities, flow control on the generative processes of neural networks towards a desired outcome and interpretability of the generative processes.

This framework was developed by our colleague and friend Marius-Constantin Dinu. Follow the project on Twitter @SymbolicAPI and GitHub https://github.com/Xpitfire/symbolicai.

Creative AI made in Austria

✨ Wrap-up CiMix 2023

In January, the film community met at the CIMIx 2023 conference to discover current trends and discuss innovative ideas. AI Creative Agency 3LIOT.ai provided generative AI content (image, audio and video) to promote this first-class event.

🆕 Event Series: AI inspiration night
On January 18th we held the first edition of our new event series, focusing on the intersection of AI and Art. Check out impressions from the kick-off event “GENERATIVE AI - how creative is AI”. In the afterwork format, decision-makers met for an interdisciplinary exchange with expert speakers such Michael Katzlberger and the digital concept artist Stephanie Meisl aka s.myselle. To be continued on 26.04. with the title "GPT REVOLUTION" - Chat GPT and the OpenAI Business Model.

🌟 Showcase your AI innovations!

AI Austria is inviting all AI enthusiasts to showcase their innovative generative AI projects! Since the start of our call in our last newsletter, you have already sent us great projects: From anonymizing images with computer-generated faces by Klagenfurt-based PiktID, community events connecting the AI and art domains in Salzburg and Vienna, to transforming photos into stunning designs with Kaleido AI’s Designify, the Austrian AI scene is buzzing with exciting advancements. Let's share and inspire each other in shaping the future of AI. Submit your projects by February 28th to be featured in our AI Austria Newsletter AIFuture GenerativeAI AustriaAI. Contact us at office@aiaustria.com to share your innovative project.