We’re excited to announce that TU Wien and the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) are developing a new methodology for trustworthy Generative Artificial Intelligence in the new European-funded project RobustifAI!

RobustifAI is a Horizon Europe project that aims to develop a rigorous design and deployment methodology tailored for reliable, robust, and trustworthy Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI). The project officially launched on June 1 and is set to run for 36 months with a total budget of €9.3 Million, with an Austrian share of around €1.36 Million. Securing funding is a major achievement for the RobustifAI consortium, especially considering that only three out of 131 proposals were selected in response to the call.

GenAI, such as foundation models, represents a powerful and transformative class of AI capable of learning patterns from data and generating new content. However, GenAI has notable shortcomings that can lead to misuse or hinder its widespread adoption and positive societal and economic impact. These shortcomings stem from three key areas: technical, operational, and user robustness. RobustifAI focuses on foundation models used in the context of human cyber-physical systems (HCPS), which are complex systems that combine computation, networking, humans, and physical processes to monitor and control real-world environments with applications in many sectors. HCPS represent the most demanding systems to address the robustness of GenAI due to their immediate physical impact, criticality, real-time, and human interaction requirements. By addressing the robustness of GenAI in HCPS, RobustifAI aims to develop solutions that can be applied across different domains, helping to make GenAI more reliable and broadly usable.

Austria plays a key role in RobustifAI by involving two prominent institutions – TU Wien and AIT, which are represented by Ezio Bartocci, professor for Formal Methods in Cyber-Physical Systems, and Dejan Nickovic from the Austrian Institute of Technology. TU Wien brings its expertise in the rigorous development and analysis of learning-enabled autonomous systems to the consortium, while AIT contributes its expertise in applied formal methods for AI-based systems and in shaping future AI policies. The two institutions have a longstanding collaboration in ensuring the safety of AI-based and autonomous systems, with joint contributions over the past decade in areas such as deep neural network verification, trustworthy system engineering, and runtime monitoring of AI-driven technologies.

About RobustifAI

RobustifAI brings together seven universities— the University of Liverpool, the Chalmers University of Technology, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Masaryk University, Oldenburg University, TU Wien, and the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur—alongside two research and technology organizations, the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). In addition, five small and medium-sized enterprises (CSX-AI, L-up, PPM Robotics, CertX, and LOXO) and four large companies (Collins Aerospace, Siemens, Thales, and Thales SIX GTS FRANCE) are also part of the consortium.

Curious about RobustifAI? You can find the original press release of the launch here, and further information about the project on their website. Keep up to date with findings and developments on LinkedIn at @RobustifAI project.

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