AI model “AustroBERT” was developed by APA in the FFG project FAIRmedia and trained on EuroHPC infrastructure – freely accessible for research and education under scientific license
APA – Austria Press Agency is the first media company in the German-speaking world to implement a self-developed AI model of the BERT family in cooperation with AI Factory Austria AI:AT.
The “AustroBERT” model implemented as part of the FFG research project FAIRmedia was trained exclusively on APA agency reports and serves as the basis for the categorisation of media texts. The introduction of this pre-trained model based on clean, license-free data increases the technological options for BERT systems in Austria and thus represents an important step towards domestic information and technology sovereignty. The model is published under a scientific license and can therefore be used free of charge by research and educational institutions. Furthermore, the APA makes the technology and model available to all interested media as a cooperative infrastructure.
EuroHPC access as a crucial building block
A central challenge in the completion of the model was the availability of sufficient GPU resources for a sufficient number of training runs. AI:AT provided support by providing professionally organized access to the infrastructure of the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking, or EuroHPC for short. AustroBERT is therefore another practical example of how the European “AI Factories Initiative” makes high-performance computers usable for specific applications.
Strong signal for data and model sovereignty
Innovation and Infrastructure Minister Peter Hanke emphasizes:
“With the AI Factory Austria, we have created the conditions for Austrian companies and research institutions, as well as media companies, to have access to and use top European infrastructures. The AustroBERT project is an outstanding example of this and demonstrates how quality journalism can benefit from artificial intelligence.”
Minister for Innovation and Space Peter Hanke (BMIMI)
Strategic relevance for APA
The cooperation with AI Factory Austria is of strategic importance to APA. As a national news agency, it has a comprehensive database of independent, fact-based reporting at its disposal. AustroBERT is a legally compliant and ethically responsible AI model that is transparently based on verified media data. Building on the experience gained in training with AustroBERT, further developments are planned in the direction of small language models for journalistic use cases. In the future, larger model approaches will also be examined.
“Against the backdrop of our Trusted Content and Trusted AI strategy, it was a logical step for APA to create its own AI model with verified data. Being the first media company to cooperate with the AI Factory Austria AI:AT gave us easy access to key technologies and computing power to drive this technological development and AI training at the forefront”
Clemens Pig, APA-CEO
Impact through access to infrastructure and expertise
Karl Kugler, Co-Lead of AI Factory Austria AI:AT, says:
“AustroBERT shows how AI:AT achieves concrete results. We provide access to high-performance infrastructure, bring together expertise and support computationally intensive AI projects so that they can be developed and trained under reliable conditions.”
Karl Kugler, Co-Lead of AI Factory Austria
About the APA – Austria Press Agency
APA – Austria Press Agency is the national news agency and the leading information service provider in Austria. It is owned by Austrian daily newspapers and the ORF. The APA Group consists of the cooperatively organized news agency (APA-News) and several national and international subsidiaries and is active with the latter in the business areas of information and communication management (APA-Comm) and information technology (APA-Tech).
APA is one of only around 20 news agencies worldwide that are independent of the state and government. APA’s multimedia reporting serves the media as a reliable, independent, fast and fact-based source. In addition, the APA Group also offers specialised solutions for communication specialists in politics and business with media monitoring, media analysis and dissemination services.
www.apa.at
About AI Factory Austria AI:AT
AI Factory Austria AI:AT is Austria’s national AI Factory within the framework of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking. It is jointly led by Advanced Computing Austria (ACA) and the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, and implemented by a nationwide Austrian consortium.
The consortium partners are: TU Wien, University of Vienna, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU), University of Innsbruck, TU Graz, Johannes Kepler University Linz (JKU), Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), INiTS – Vienna’s High-Tech Incubator – and EODC – Earth Observation Data Centre for Water Resources Monitoring GmbH. AI:AT combines AI-optimised high-performance infrastructure with a physical hub and supports organisations from business, public administration and applied research as a market-neutral, independent access point along the AI journey – from the first use case to practical implementation.
www.ai-at.eu
Funding Acknowledgement
The AI Factory Austria (AI:AT) is co-funded by the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement no. 101253078. The Joint Undertaking is supported by the Horizon Europe program of the European Union and Austria (BMIMI/FFG).
