Baden-Württemberg operates Aleph Alpha's AI system

The performance of German AI specialist Alfa has recently been questioned. Now the startup and its partners can announce a remarkable success.

Heilbronn – Baden-Württemberg will be the first federal state in Germany to use an AI system to significantly reduce the burden on state employees. In addition, administrative services are to be made easier for citizens to use. The F13 system was primarily developed by the Heidelberg AI startup Aleph Alpha. The GovTech Campus Germany association has announced that it will also be possible to use it by other public administrations in Germany from September onwards.

With the F13, documents can be analyzed more quickly, applications can be processed automatically and complex data can be evaluated efficiently, said Baden-Württemberg Interior Minister Thomas Strobl (CDU). It is important that the AI ​​technologies used comply with ethical principles. “We are not dependent on China here, nor on America, but are finding our own European way here.”

CEO Androlis: “Meeting the highest standards of data protection”

The service runs on computers in Germany so that sensitive data does not flow abroad but is processed locally. The hosting provider is STACKIT, which belongs to the IT and trade group Schwarz Group (Lidl, Kaufland). Last November, the Schwarz Group, together with the venture capital firm Innovation Park Artificial Intelligence (IPAI) and the Bosch Group, announced a €500 million investment in Aleph Alpha.

F13 consistently delivers on the promise of sovereign AI, said Jonas Andrulis, CEO and founder of Aleph Alpha. “Citizens can count on compliance with the highest data protection standards and public sector experts across the country can count on understandable results that efficiently complement their specialist expertise, thus freeing up more time to address people’s concerns.”

The system was initially trained using publicly available data such as state parliament publications and press releases. In the future, F13 should also learn from internal documents from the administration.

“AI technology can be adapted for management purposes.”

State Secretary Florian Stegmann (Greens), President of the Baden-Württemberg State Chancellery, emphasized that the system provides employees in the administration with very tangible added value. “The F13 was a wake-up call. After the hype surrounding OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot, we showed: AI technology can be adapted to administration.

The euphoria surrounding Aleph Alpha has largely subsided recently, also because it has become known that the company made just under €1 million in sales last year. Critics of the startup also pointed out that the promised funding round did not happen all at once, but that only €100 million of the initial €500 million was received.

“These financing details have been made public,” Andrulis said in Heilbronn. “They have also been picked up by individual media outlets and reported correctly.” “Can this be explained better? Yes, it can always be explained better. As with the technology we use, our financing is complex.”