1. Human Centric Generative AI made in Europe
Background and scope:
The rise of generative AI is astonishing. By seamlessly enhancing human abilities with machine capabilities, this next wave of AI may boost productivity in many sectors, create a new industry and also lead to profound socio-economic changes.
Furthermore, Generative AI is likely to revolutionise human-computer interaction, fostering more intuitive, conversational, and adaptive experiences.
Nevertheless, these advantages are not without some limitations. Current generative AI models function based on predictions rather than understanding, and their extensive capabilities and inherent risks are yet to be fully discovered.
The aim of this Challenge is to foster a European, human-centric approach to AI, tackling prevalent issues like transparency deficit and trust inadequacy. European AI start-ups have the potential to develop the next generation of generative AI models that embody EU values and guarantee Europe’s sovereignty in this critical field.
Specific objectives:
This Challenge aims to support the development of:
- foundation language and multimodal ‘frontier’ models that reach performances at least equivalent to the most powerful state of the art large generative models, capable of meeting the needs of European user industry, scientists, public sector and citizens;
- smaller foundation models with highly promising performance competing with frontier models in specific domains.
It is expected that the developed models go beyond the current state of the art in a way suitable for overcoming the current difficulties and limitations of this kind of tools. Examples of areas in which there could be relevant technological improvements include:
- Reliable content: Generative AI models minimising fictional elements;
- Transparency and traceability: Generative AI models allowing to trace the origin of the information provided.
The targeted applicants are primarily SMEs developing models themselves, but could also include SMEs providing innovative infrastructure, development tools, and critical support to the developers of generative AI solutions, in helping the efficient use of existing models while addressing specific issues such as hallucination or limited models knowledge.
The applicant must demonstrate a genuine commitment to developing and deploying “European-Value driven” AI. This European perspective should become a differentiating factor that will bring a competitive advantage to these companies, and also an important element to de-risk future investments.
Expected outcomes and impacts:
This Challenge is expected to reinforce the development of foundation models, which are “European-Value driven”, in line with the trustworthy and ethical principles as well as the (draft) AI Act.
The AI models developed and deployed under this Challenge are expected to comply with the EU concept for Trustworthy AI81 and the relevant ethical principles82 as well as the (draft) AI Act. In that respect, besides performances, due attention should be paid to data quality, transparency, privacy, and security.
Specific conditions:
Any technology under this Challenge must be developed in a robust manner, paying specific attention to safety, security and ethics considerations in future applications.
[Artificial Intelligence has been identified in the list of critical technology areas for the EU’s economic security and recommended for joint priority risk assessments.83 In order to safeguard the Union’s strategic assets, interests, autonomy, or security and to achieve the technological objectives and expected outcomes described above, the following additional eligibility condition applies:
- Beneficiaries and recipients of the grant component of Accelerator funding84 must not be directly or indirectly controlled by a non-associated third country or a legal entity established in a non-associated third country85.
Furthermore, in case of an investment support, specific safeguards may be introduced in the investment agreement (see Introduction, section on Economic Security).]
Sources: EIC Work Programme 2023:
BUDGET : 50 M€
XXXEIC Accelerator: https://eic.ec.europa.eu/eic-funding-opportunities/eic-pathfinder_en
Enabling virtual worlds and augmented interaction in high-impact applications to support the realisation of Industry 5.0