AI Austria monthly: February'24 Update

New exciting startups from Austria, European innovation package, grant programs and matchmaking events, new fellowships & much more

Matthias Grabner

Michael Katzlberger

Jeannette Gorzala

, and 2 others

Feb 07, 2024

The year of the dragon is about to start. We wish you a happy lunar year. Read our latest edition to get up to speed on the ECs innovation package, exciting developments in Austria and many call to actions.

🚀 Latest Developments

🇪🇺 AI innovation package to support startups & SMEs

The European Commission's presented its AI Innovation Strategy, a comprehensive plan to enhance AI innovation in Europe, focusing on the establishment of AI Factories and the GenAI4EU initiative. Key points:

AI Factories aim to create ecosystems around public supercomputers for developing AI, with emphasis on:
- Providing computing power through EuroHPC supercomputers.
- Linking to data centers for large-scale data storage.
- Offering supercomputing services and support for AI startups.
- Developing talent through collaborations with universities and research centers.
- Ensuring synergies at the Union level with various EU initiatives.
GenAI4EU Initiative seeks to integrate generative AI across strategic sectors, highlighting:
- Targeting sectors such as healthcare, robotics, and climate change for AI application.
- Developing generative AI applications to improve sector performance.
- Establishing an AI Office for monitoring progress and fostering collaboration.
- Providing investment and support to stimulate innovation and development.

This strategy underlines the EU's commitment to leveraging AI for economic growth, technological sovereignty, and ethical development. » link to official press release

🇦🇹 AI made in Austria - part 1: Neuro-Symoblic AI Systems as the next wave of AI

ExtensityAI, an Austrian deep-tech research startup, unveiled groundbreaking work last Friday with the release of "SymbolicAI: A framework for logic-based approaches combining generative models and solvers". This paper has captured the attention of the global research community, providing innovative insights into developing and evaluating fully autonomous AI applications. The lead author and co-founder of ExtensityAI, Marius-Constantin Dinu, along with co-author Sepp Hochreiter et al., have opened up a new venue for creating broad AI systems based on neuro-symbolic workflows, which leverages classical and learning-based systems. Ilya Venger, Data and AI Product Lead at Microsoft, noted that we “now start to see some Neuro-symbolic systems that are a blend of both approaches” and talks about the “next leap in AI capabilities”. Professor Gary Marcus, a prominent figure in the field of artificial intelligence, predicted that “neurosymbolic AI will explode in the next two or three years” and highlights the team's accomplishments. ExtensityAI is actively seeking funds to expand their groundbreaking solutions. Their goal is to collaborate with industry leaders to democratize AI systems by developing an open-source and on-premise R&D AI-platform in Europe. They aim to equip companies with tools that ensure data privacy and IP protection, and reduce reliance on API-based AI services as offered by OpenAI and others. » Read more on their website www.extensity.ai.

🇦🇹 AI made in Austria - part 2: NXAI

Linz is set to become a European leader in AI research with the launch of NXAI, a private AI research and product development center. Initiated by AI pioneer Sepp Hochreiter, in collaboration with investor Stefan Pierer and Netural, NXAI aims to develop a superior version of ChatGPT. The center, which currently employs ten people, focuses on advancing European Large Language Model technology, xLSTM, to serve as a foundational technology across industries. This initiative comes in response to Hochreiter's criticism of insufficient AI funding and support in Austria, aiming to transform academic knowledge into economic and industrial applications.

» For more details, visit the full article here.

🤖 Call for applicants: Digital Humanism Fellowship

The ongoing digital transformation poses fundamental questions way beyond applied technology-focused research.
Bundesministerium für Klimaschutz, Umwelt, Energie, Mobilität, Innovation & Technologie continues to support the Digital Humanism Fellowship at IWM via Fellowships. » Further info and application

📣 KI Trust 2023 Matchmaking Event

Our friends at FFG & BMK are hosting a matchmaking event on 21.02.2024, 09:00 - 10:00 (online).

The Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation & Technology (BMK) and the FFG are inviting participants to share research priorities and project ideas for the KI Trust 2023 call.

Topics to be covered:

How can we facilitate a dialogue about the goals, methods, and impacts of AI in an open and constructive manner? Let's collectively find solutions to the challenges posed by AI.
What support services do Austrian companies, not yet addressed in the existing AI landscape, require concerning current norms and laws (e.g., AI Act, Data Act, Data Governance Act, etc.)?
Identifying socially relevant developments in AI is crucial. Let's discuss emerging trends, technologies, and applications and explore methods for their systematic identification.

» Further info and registration

🇭🇰 Global Incubator Network bringing Austrian AI Startups to Hongkong!

The FFG and aws Global Incubator Network are launching "Go Hong Kong 2024" for Austrian AI startups ready to expand internationally, especially to the Greater Bay Area/Asia. Starting January 15, startups established in the last 7 years with a seed-stage investment, a working prototype/MVP, and a proven business model can apply. This program offers a unique opportunity to connect with key stakeholders in Hong Kong. See more here.

📚 Event announcement

How real is the digital reality? D#A Live Audio Session

Join "How Real Is the Digital Reality? D#A Live Audio Session" by Andreas Fraunberger and Stephanie Meisl. Explore AI's impact on reality with experts like Lulu Schmidt and Bernd Gutmansbauer. Dive into discussions on AI Avatars, Digital Humanism, and distinguishing real from fake. Engage through live chat. Don't miss this thought-provoking session on technology and humanity. End of March, details TBA.

Data Driven Dialog – Extreme is the new norm!

We live in times of extremes, whether it be weather events or short-term production bottlenecks. But when does the extraordinary become normal? These and similar questions will be discussed at the Data Driven Dialog on Anomaly Detection in Time Series Data on February 29, 2024 in Graz, Austria.

"Excite: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence for Executives" AI is pivotal across industries. Learn its potential for your team at our briefing "Excite – Introduction to AI for Executives" on 10.04.2024 in Klagenfurt. No prerequisites, just bring your interest. Fraunhofer Austria Innovationscenter KI4LIFE awaits! Note: Early bird discount of -10% until February 28, 2023!

"The time is right – for Time Series Analysis" Join us on 17.04.2024 at Fraunhofer Austria Innovationscenter KI4LIFE to explore key modeling techniques. Focus on algorithms for parameter determination and prediction in a data-driven world. For Data Scientists and those with basic data analysis and programming knowledge. Note: Early bird discount of -10% until March 10, 2024!

✨ Generative AI News ✨

👉 Amazon unveiled Rufus, an AI-driven shopping aide, leveraging its vast product database and external web information. This innovative tool debuts in a beta phase for select U.S. customers, with plans for a broader rollout in the coming weeks.

👉 Google is enhancing its Bard AI chatbot, introducing image creation features via its Imagen 2 AI model and upgrading to a more advanced version of Gemini Pro. This move aims to heighten the competition with OpenAI's ChatGPT, as announced by CEO Sundar Pichai.

👉 Inappropriate AI-images of Taylor Swift have emerged on social media, particularly X/Twitter, leading to her fans rallying together to overwhelm the sites with supportive messages. As reported by The Verge, a post on X attracted more than 45 million views and 24,000 shares before being taken down, with the platform also banning the user who initially uploaded the content.

👉 Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, discussed the firm's AI ambitions, emphasizing the strategic aim to develop and share an open-source artificial general intelligence. Meta is also reorganizing its AI research, aligning its Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) division more closely with the GenAI team to push AI towards achieving human-like cognitive abilities.

🌏 Asia spotlight

ByteDance just announced MagicVideo-V2, a Multi-Stage High-Aesthetic Video Generation from text to video. Although it entered the GenAI market a bit late, but with it’s unique short video database, the world largest short video platform(TikTok and Douyin), it holds a very strong position in creating their own video generation model. » more

Alibaba announces Motionshop, tro replace characters in videos with 3D avatars » more

Baidu presents UniVG. Towards UNIfied-modal Video Generation » more

Tencent introduced PhotoMaker: Customizing Realistic Human Photos via Stacked ID Embedding Instant customization, no LoRA training. High-quality generation » more

Tencent just released VideoCrafter2 demo on Hugging Face, high quality text-to-video model. Overcoming Data Limitations for High-Quality Video Diffusion Models. » more

TikTok is trialling an artificial intelligence model that will enable users to create a new song to perfectly soundtrack their video. This is a model that can generate a melody to fit around lyrics that the user has inputted and the music will be of a genre also selected by the creator. » more

Baichuan AI released the large language model Baichuan 3 with parameters exceeding one trillion. In medical evaluations such as MCMLE, MedExam, CMExam that test logical reasoning abilities, Baichuan 3’s Chinese performance is also claimed to surpass GPT-4 and is considered the “best-performing large model for Chinese medical tasks”. » more

In Japan, author Rie Kudan made a groundbreaking announcement during her award ceremony, revealing that she had used ChatGPT to assist in writing her novel. This novel earned her a distinguished literary prize, marking a significant moment in the fusion of artificial intelligence and creative writing. more

Samsung released the Galaxy S24 series, blending local and cloud-based AI functionalities, with Samsung Gauss and Google's Gemini Nano model enabling tasks like image editing and offline translation directly on the device. This integration signifies a definitive move towards edge computing in mobile technology, marking a future where running AI models on mobile devices becomes the standard, promising enhanced functionality and privacy. more

Tencent presents BlockFusion, an expandable 3D Scene Generation using Latent Tri-plane Extrapolation » more