February 16, 2025

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German AI on the Cutting Edge but Struggling to Find Commercial Success

German AI on the Cutting Edge, but Commercially at a Loss

As part of the efforts to keep up in the race of developing artificial intelligence models, the bloc recently announced a plan. It comes as US President launched multibillion-dollar AI projects in January and made headlines with its own called .

Björn Ommer, a professor of artificial intelligence at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU), told DW that AI is driving the rapid emergence of new business models. But, he warned, "missing out on this will cost us dearly, so we need to step on the accelerator."

Ommer, one of Germany's leading AI specialists, was the mastermind behind German startup Black Forest Labs. The company has developed an image generator that has convinced even US venture capital providers and that integrated the AI tool.

But Black Forest Labs is more of an outlier in the world of so-called foundation models, which are dominated by US and Chinese companies. A foundation model is an AI neural network — trained on mountains of raw data, generally with unsupervised learning — that can be adapted to accomplish a broad range of tasks.

The market for large foundation models is very much in the hands of AI heavyweights such as OpenAI's , Gemini, Perplexity, Midjourney and DALL-E. China's DeepSeek is also considered an efficient foundation model for text processing, according to media reports.

Ommer believes the opportunities for German companies in AI will lie "outside of foundation models." AI applications for medicine, customer communication and specialized industrial sectors, he said, could mean profitable business in the future.

Katharina Morik shares this perspective. The now-retired researcher co-founded the Lamarr Institute for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in Dortmund, Germany. She views large language models as a gateway to AI — similar to the emergence of the smartphone which gave users access to multiple applications.

New Artificial Intelligence Tool Predicts Right Whale Movements

Scientists at Rutgers University developed a computer program that uses artificial intelligence to predict movements and patterns of North Atlantic right whales, potentially helping to protect the highly endangered species from ship strikes. The program combines data from autonomous underwater gliders and satellite information on oceanographic and physical conditions to discover patterns and relationships. The AI program offers detailed predictions of when and where right whales could be present around proposed offshore wind turbine arrays, enabling the implementation of different mitigation strategies to protect them.

An Artificial Intelligence Firm Steals Our Content. We News Media Companies Are Suing

An artificial intelligence firm steals our content. We news media companies are suing

We allege that Cohere Inc. is using AI to commit massive, systematic copyright and trademark infringement.

The American economy is built on intellectual property. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office comes from IP-intensive industries. From podcasters to influencers to newspapers, intellectual property powers free speech and incentivizes the creative process and investment in quality works.

Artificial intelligence companies have recognized this quality but unfortunately have chosen to take advantage of others' intellectual property to fuel their products. Now the Chinese AI app is teaching those very AI companies by using their creativity and intelligence.

That's why on Thursday, for the first time ever, a diverse group of news and magazine members of the News/Media Alliance came together that we believe has been egregiously violating copyright protections as it trains its model and spits out answers for its users.

CPGs' Shared Vision for AI and How to Get There

Consumer packaged goods industry leaders were tantalized by the potential of well before ChatGPT 3.0's November 2022 introduction. Combinations of GenAI and "traditional" rules-based machine learning suddenly promised to boost automation across a wide swath of CPG business processes while enabling sophisticated, AI-driven forecasting and analysis based on natural-language queries by nontechnical staff.

It's been more than two years since the dawn of the GenAI revolution. Where does the CPG industry stand with AI? And where does it look like it's headed?

SAP recently surveyed dozens of global CPG leaders to find out. They represented a diversity of segments (food and beverage, beauty care, household products, health and personal care, and durables, among others) and sizes, with annual revenues from $500 million to more than $25 billion. Here's what we learned.

First, the big picture. While CPG businesses all have their own AI-related visions and deployment roadmaps, there's a surprisingly universal understanding of the ultimate highest and best use of AI in this industry.

AI will help CPG companies detect and predict shifting consumer tastes while enabling greater customization and of products for those consumers. It will drive increasingly automated product innovation cycles by producing goods via AI-streamlined supply chain and manufacturing processes steered by AI-powered demand forecasting. In short, AI will enable CPG firms to meet consumer needs with unprecedented precision and agility.

Musk: New Version of Grok AI Tool Launching Monday

Elon Musk says his xAi will debut the latest version of its Grok model this week. "Grok 3 release with live demo on Monday night at 8pm PT," Musk wrote on his X social media platform Saturday (Feb. 15) evening. "Smartest AI on Earth."

In another post, Musk shared some of Grok's handiwork, a play on one of the poems from "The Lord of the Rings" books, reimagined to introduce "creation of advanced large language models (LLMs) with search, agency, memory, and humor."

FBS Launches AI Assistant for Confident Trading

FBS introduces FBS AI Assistant, a next-generation tool designed to support traders in making informed decisions. This AI-powered feature analyzes instrument charts in seconds, providing real-time insights based on price trends, patterns, and key market signals.

Gerry Goldstein: Trump and A.I. Trade Critiques

With fanfare, President Trump a few weeks back encouraged a private sector investment of up to $500 billion to enhance Artificial Intelligence. There's an irony here, because Artificial Intelligence thinks he's crazy. Well, not quite, but close enough for me. Trump praised A.I. and the proposed joint venture by Softbank, Oracle, and OpenAI, declaring, "A.I. seems to be very hot. And our country will be prospering like never before."

Since that's what Donald Trump thinks of A.I., I wondered what A.I. thinks of Donald Trump. So, without naming names, I asked ChatGPT to discuss "national leaders who were crazy." In a few seconds, a list appeared, topped by A.I.'s caution:

"The term 'crazy' is subjective and can often be used to describe leaders whose actions or beliefs seem erratic, unconventional, or extreme. History has seen several national leaders who might be characterized in this way, often due to their controversial decisions, bizarre behavior, or ideologies."

WGA West President Meredith Stiehm Calls On Studios To Sue AI Companies, Takes Aim At Trump At Guild Awards

Meredith Stiehm called on studios to sue AI companies and also took aim at the Trump administration during Saturday night's WGA Awards. WGA West President Meredith Stiehm sought to reassure members that the guild is doing its best to work in their favor during her speech at Saturday night’s guild awards. Not only did she once speak out against the use of writers’ work to train AI systems, she also took a jab at the Trump administration, declaring: "We do not cower in the face of bullies."

Key Takeaways

  • The German AI industry is on the cutting edge, but commercially at a loss, with opportunities lying outside of foundation models.
  • A new artificial intelligence tool predicts right whale movements, potentially helping to protect the highly endangered species from ship strikes.
  • An artificial intelligence firm is being sued by news media companies for copyright and trademark infringement.
  • The CPG industry has a shared vision for AI, with a focus on detecting and predicting shifting consumer tastes and enabling greater customization and product innovation.
  • Elon Musk is launching a new version of his Grok AI tool, which he claims will be the smartest AI on Earth.
  • FBS has launched an AI assistant for confident trading, which analyzes instrument charts in seconds and provides real-time insights.
  • Artificial intelligence thinks Donald Trump is crazy, and has listed him as one of the national leaders who were crazy.
  • The WGA West President has called on studios to sue AI companies and taken aim at the Trump administration during the guild awards.

Sources

AI AI Applications AI Ethics AI and Business AI in Finance AI in Healthcare AI in Industry AI in Media Artificial Intelligence Copyright Infringement Deep Learning Foundation Models German AI Industry Large Language Models Machine Learning Natural Language Processing Trademark Infringement