AI Austria monthly: March'24 Update

All about Austria in this edition: Austrian founders going genAI, Austria as an AI business location, Austrian AI Advisory Board, AI Act making progress, call to actions, events, jobs & much more

Matthias Grabner

Michael Katzlberger

Jeannette Gorzala

, and 2 others

Mar 05, 2024

Easter is just around the corner and the AI landscape has never been busier. In this months’ edition we take a look at Austrian AI founders going big in the US, as well as international founders choosing Austria as their headquarter and the Austrian AI Advisory Board that has been installed. The spotlight on the AI Act is slowly fading, since the deal is done and there are only a few procedural matters to completion. However, battles are going on behind the scenes on the delegated acts playing field…

🚀 Latest Developments

🤖 AI Advisory Board installed to advise the Austrian Government

In addition to the AI Service Center (KI Servicestelle) established at the Austrian Broadcasting and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (RTR), an AI Advisory Board has been installed to advise the Austrian Government on technical, social and ethical topics relating to artificial intelligence. The AI Advisory Board was constituted on 28 February 2024, » derStandard and TrendingTopics reported. The eleven members of the AI Advisory Board are:

Horst Bischof (TU Graz) - Chairman of the Board
Jeannette Gorzala (AI Austria) - Deputy Chairman of the Board
Markus Fallenböck (Uni Graz)
Nikolaus Forgó (Uni Wien)
Sabine T. Köszegi (TU Wien)
Bernhard Moser (ASAI)
Clara Neppel (IEEE Technology Centre GmbH)
Walter Peissl (Akademie der Wissenschaften)
Carina Zehetmaier (Women in AI)
Erich Albrechtowitz (Bundeskanzleramt)
Verena Krawarik (Austria Presse Agentur)

We congratulate all the members of the AI Advisory Board on their election and are particularly proud to see AI Austria represented with our very own Chief Policy Officer, Jeannette Gorzala. 😃🦾

With the AI Service Center initiative by Digital State Secretary Florian Tursky and Media Minister Susanne Raab and the AI Advisory Board, Austria aims to leverage economic potential, provide support and bundle and expand knowledge on AI. The AI Advisory Board will also participate in the revision of the Austrian AI Strategy dating back to 2021. The revision of the Austrian AI Strategy shall be presented in the first half of the year.

💰 Austrian founders raise $117M Series-B round

Magic AI Secures $117 Million to Build an AI Software Engineer

In what amounts to the largest financing round by Austrian AI founders, Eric Steinberger and Sebastian De Ro raised another $117M for Magic. The startup is developing an AI software engineer, which is designed to assist with complex coding tasks and act more like a coworker than a “copilot” tool, according to the founders.

Magic AI’s technology is based on a large language model with a very large context window, which allows it to understand code in a more nuanced way. The company is still in stealth mode, but it is actively recruiting talent. With this new funding, Magic AI is likely to become a major player in the AI landscape.

🌎 AI Landscape Austria: Why international companies choose 🇦🇹

In February the invest in Austria conference took place in Vienna, ft. ministers and business leaders. To celebrate the occasion, Clemens took a closer look at international AI founders and companies, who chose to setup their HQ/branch in Austria. A few common themes

Fast growing talent pool, with 2500+ students currently enrolled in AI BA/MA programs, most prominently at the JKU Linz
Austria ranks EU-wide in the top3 for non-dilutive startup and tech grants
Strong support for int'l founders led to traction
Major players like Qualcomm, Canva and Crayon
A very dense network of public and non-profit organisations, offering relocation and ramp-up support in form of non-repayable grants, to name just a few

For more info » check out the full deepdive

🇦🇹 Landesrechnungshof Oberösterreich goes AI

The Upper Austrian State Audit Office (LRH) is preparing to use AI to make its work easier and more accurate, and is currently running two projects. One project, called “Phönix”, aims to audit financial statements and other documents using data analysis and AI, while the other project, funded by the EU, explores the existing AI tools for data analysis and auditing worldwide. The LRH director expects that AI will fundamentally change the way audits are conducted in the coming years, but also acknowledges the challenges of data protection and AI regulation. » more

🚄 AI Act Roadmap - regulation on track, are you?

The big reporting, wild speculations and the excitement on the AI Act and the regulatory framework it will install in the European Union has moved from the daily headline-reporting to the background. The plenary vote has been moved up to next week, 13 March. However, this does not mean that the AI Act will enter into force earlier. The work of lawyer linguists is still ongoing and will need a few more weeks. The entry into force is still expected for May/June 2024. Despite the AI Act now slowly fading from the news, do not let it drop off your priority list if you are developing or using AI. Once the AI Act is set, it will be a wild ride to implement it, if you are in the scope of this regulation 🎡🚀

🎙️ Podcast: ChatGPT & Co: How quickly do we need new laws?

Social media, AI... Technological development is progressing. However, progress also poses challenges for society and politics. How quickly should we react to these challenges? Should we regulate technologies as early as possible? Or is it better to wait so as not to slow down technological progress too much? Is there even a right speed? In the current episode, host Tatjana Lukáš talks to Sabine Theresia Köszegi, member of the "UNESCO Commission Austria's Advisory Board on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence" and the "AI Advisory Board" of the Austrian Federal Government, about these questions. » Listen to the podcast

📣 Call for applicants

🏆 Startup Worldcup 2024

Invest.austria and AustrianStartups are hosting the Startup World Cup - the largest startup pitch competition in the world - for the fourth time in Austria! The application phase runs until 10 March 2024. Don't miss your chance and apply today! This isn’t just a competition, this is the full SWC experience. Take the opportunity to be part of a journey packed with workshops, networking, insightful sessions and all the essentials to maximize your Startup World Cup experience. We'll be with you every step of the way.

Ready to take the leap? » Apply now or find more details on the official page

📺 Fellowship for media startups

The Media Innovation Lab of Wiener Zeitung group is offering a fellowship program for media startups, with up to 40,000 euros in funding and expert support. The program lasts nine months and covers various topics related to content and media tech, such as product development, marketing, and legal issues. The application deadline is March 13, 2024 and the program is open to media creators and media tech teams with innovative ideas and an Austrian location. » more

🔟 IECT - Hermann Hauser Summer School for Entrepreneurship turns 10

Ready to elevate your idea to the next level? Are you an academic entrepreneur – scientist, researcher, student, ... - and are aspiring to launch a startup or have already embarked on your entrepreneurial journey and want to take to the next level? We'll support you with the right network and tools.

The registration for the deeptech bootcamp in the alps is now officially open. This year the IECT is celebrating a decade of innovation, learning, and community building at Villa Blanka in Innsbruck. » apply here

📈 Free Webinar "KI Storytelling - Erwartungsmanagement im Unternehmen

Your managers expect that AI will solve all their problems? At the same time, employees show fierce resistance to your AI project because they fear that AI will take their jobs? Make the breakthrough with proactive expectation management and AI storytelling! » free registration

✨ 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.

👉 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.

👉 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

Baidu announced a study DreamGaussian, Generative Gaussian Splatting for Efficient 3D Content Creation, enabling high-quality 3D generation in 2 minutes.

Bytedance presents Boximator, generating rich and controllable motions for video synthesis

Tencent released a new version of its DynamiCrafter video generation model, showcasing enhanced capabilities and upgraded resolution.

Meizu, which was acquired by Chinese automaker Geely in 2022, will no longer make smartphones, to pursue an "all in AI" strategy over the next three years (South China Morning Post)

Chinese startup Moonshot AI raised over $1B at a $2.5B valuation from backers including Alibaba. The startup focuses on the development of LLMs handling long-form text and has a ChatGPT alternative called 'Kimi Chat'.

ByteDance presents SDXL-Lightninga lightning fast 1024px text-to-image generation model. Progressive Adversarial Diffusion Distillation model achieves new SOTA on one-step/few-steps generation.

China's first AI anime will soon be aired on China's CCTV station. Launched in collaboration with the assistance of Shanghai AI Lab (Which published animatediff).

Huawei spin-off Honor demonstrated its AI-infused Magic 6 Pro smartphone, showing off the ability to control a car by just looking at the phone screen.