One of the objectives of the Confiance.ai collective, which recently presented the results of its work, is to contribute to the operational implementation of the future AI-Act. On October 6, it announced a Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) with a German consortium led by VDE, one of the most important technology organizations in Europe based in Germany.

The Confiance.ai program brings together an ecosystem of nearly 50 partners, including startups, SMEs and laboratories, around its 13 founding industrial and academic partners (Air Liquide, Airbus, Atos, CEA, Inria, Naval Group, Renault, Safran, IRT Saint Exupery, Sopra Steria, IRT SystemX and Thales).

The German consortium led by VDE brings together 10 partners from industry, academia and civil society, including Bosch, Siemens, Technische Universität Darmstadt, SAP, ITAS/KIT, iRights.Lab, Ferdinand-Steinbeis-Institut, BASF, TÜV-SÜD and IZEW Universität Tübingen.

Whether on the French or German side, these are therefore leading players representing a significant number of strategic industrial sectors for Europe, who will join forces to create during 2023 a common Franco-German label on trusted and responsible AI, closely linked to the future harmonized standards of the AI Act.

This label aims to provide guidelines and specifications for AI applications and thus contribute to the operational implementation of the future regulation by industry.

The partners of the collective and the consortium will propose a common repository on trusted AI (characteristics necessary for reliability, evaluation framework and key performance indicators). Based on the pooling of previous work carried out by each partner, it will address issues of ethics, responsibility and security and may also extend to environmental issues related to AI.

Their ambition is to bring this label to the European scale, and they will propose a governance structure, the future European industrial alliance on AI, to ensure its promotion and dissemination.

Julien Chiaroni, Director of the Grand Défi IA within the General Secretariat for Investment, comments:

“The Confiance.ai collective has been collaborating with the German ecosystem for many months. The strength of this alliance between leading industrial and academic partners lies in our desire to promote a common vision of trusted and responsible AI, and to create a dedicated label initially at the Franco-German level, but which will have a vocation to be carried to the European scale.”

Sebastian Hallensleben, head of digital transition and AI at VDE, adds:

“The consensus on the principles of responsible AI use – such as transparency, fairness, privacy, reliability and accountability – is quite clear. The challenge lies in the operational implementation of these principles. With our AI Trust Standard & Label, we have developed a practical approach from a German perspective and look forward to not only evolving it, but also integrating it into French and ultimately European work. The potential for synergies is considerable.”

Translated from Confiance.ai et VDE s’associent pour créer un label franco-allemand sur l’IA de confiance et responsable