Privacy-preserving human-AI dialogue systems – Organisation of a technological challenge
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See in 5 min if you're eligible for Privacy-preserving human-AI dialogue systems – Organisation of a technological challenge offering max €20.0M funding💰 Funding Details
Funding Description
Scope of Financing
* Up to €20 million lump-sum per grant under the European Defence Fund (EDF).
* Covers the full life-cycle of the technological challenge: infrastructure set-up, data collection/annotation, evaluation campaign management, stakeholder workshops, governance, dissemination and project management.
* Funding also eligible for optional activities that create or design new knowledge/technologies (Art.10(3) a, c, d), provided they clearly underpin the mandatory "integrating knowledge" tasks.
* Excludes: system prototyping, product testing, qualification, certification, life-cycle efficiency activities (Art.10(3) e–i not listed as eligible).
Eligible Applicants
1. Consortia of at least three legal entities from minimum three different EU Member States or associated countries (EDF Article 7).
2. All entities must be established in the EU/associated countries, not controlled by non-associated third countries (or must request a control waiver).
3. Mandatory presence of:
* At least one defence end-user organisation (e.g. MoD, armed forces, procurement agency) to chair the User Board.
* At least one data-centric R&D actor with proven expertise in large-scale multimodal annotation.
* An IT/security prime capable of hosting Classified Information up to at least EU SECRET, or a clear subcontracting plan for a certified facility.
Funding Model & Payment Schedule
* Lump-Sum Grant Agreement (EDF-AG-LS) – one global amount covers all eligible costs; no cost reporting, only deliverables & milestones.
* Payment triggers:
1. Pre-financing (30 %) – upon Grant Agreement signature.
2. Interim payment(s) (40 %) – after acceptance of mid-term reporting package (incl. first evaluation campaign & User Board minutes).
3. Balance (30 %) – after final review, validation of KPI dataset release and final debrief workshop.
Co-funding & National Contributions
* EDF covers up to 100 % of eligible costs for research actions.
* Member States may top-up, but the lump-sum declared to the EC must remain deterministic and auditable.
Key Compliance Points
* Security Work Package mandatory (TEMPEST, crypto, access control).
* Ethics & GDPR management plan for privacy-preserving data sets and interactions.
* Open Data: final anonymised benchmark corpora to be released to the European Defence community under a permissive licence, unless classified.
📊 At a Glance
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🇪🇺 Strategic Advantages
EU-Wide Advantages & Opportunities for "Privacy-Preserving Human-AI Dialogue Systems – Organisation of a Technological Challenge" (EDF-2025-LS-RA-CHALLENGE-DIGIT-HAIDO)
1. Single Market Access
• Pan-European test-bed for dual-use dialogue tech: A defence-oriented benchmark automatically positions participating SMEs and RTOs to re-package spin-offs for the €400 bn EU civil security & digital markets (critical infrastructure monitoring, public safety, multilingual customer support).
• Early compliance with EU AI Act & GDPR: Solutions validated in the challenge will already satisfy the toughest data-protection rules, simplifying later commercial roll-out to 450 + million consumers and public bodies.
2. Cross-Border Collaboration
• Mandatory multinational consortium (≥3 entities from ≥2 MS) catalyses:
• Pooling of classified data annotation know-how from different national defence ministries.
• Joint ownership of multilingual corpora (e.g., FR, DE, PL, FI) otherwise unattainable by a single country.
• Defence User Board offers direct access to operational commanders across NATO/EU, shortening feedback loops and raising TRL.
3. Alignment with Core EU Strategies
• Digital Europe & Secure Connectivity: Federated testing infrastructure can be plugged into EuroHPC & GAIA-X nodes, reinforcing Europe’s digital sovereignty.
• Strategic Compass for Defence: Project strengthens the EU’s ability to conduct secure information advantage operations and strategic communications.
• Cybersecurity Strategy: Privacy-preserving dialogue mechanisms complement EU efforts on quantum-resistant cryptography and Zero-Trust architectures.
4. Regulatory Harmonisation & Standardisation
• Creation of de-facto EU standard metrics for robustness, hallucination rate, explainability, classification handling – increasing interoperability between national C2 systems.
• Input to ETSI & CEN/CENELEC working groups on trustworthy AI, accelerating EU-wide certification schemes and easing market entry.
5. Access to Europe’s Innovation Ecosystem
• Synergies with EDIHs & DIHs: Challenge infrastructure can be hosted in existing European Digital Innovation Hubs, giving participants coaching, test environments and SME matchmaking.
• Academic excellence: Tap into world-leading NLP laboratories (Inria, DFKI, CLARIN ERIC) and defence research centres (FOI, Fraunhofer INT) under a single grant umbrella.
6. Funding & Programme Synergies
• Complementarity with:
• Horizon Europe Cluster 3 (Civil Security) & Cluster 4 (Digital) – follow-on grants for dual-use upgrades.
• DIGITAL Europe "Data Spaces for Defence" – reuse curated corpora.
• EIC Transition – fast-track innovative sub-modules (e.g., confidential-computing inference) to market.
• EDF lump-sum model reduces audit burden and enables co-funding from national ministries or NATO DIANA without double-funding risks.
7. Scale & Impact Potential
• EU-wide deployment roadmap embedded in proposal WP (evaluation site rotations across MS), ensuring broad adoption and political visibility.
• Shared annotated datasets & open-sourced evaluation scripts (subject to security classification) will become reference assets for future EDF, Horizon and ESA calls, multiplying impact beyond project lifetime.
• Community building: Annual debriefing workshops + online leaderboards create a sustainable European "Defence NLP League" similar to ImageNet/ARC, anchoring talent in Europe and attracting FDI.
8. Strategic Value of Operating at EU Level
1. Critical mass: Only an EU consortium can gather enough multilingual, mission-specific data to train models that outperform US/Asian competitors in European theatres.
2. Cost-sharing for high-security infrastructure (SCIF-compliant clouds, secure enclaves) – unaffordable for most single MS.
3. Unified political narrative: Demonstrates EU added value in emerging defence AI, supporting arguments for increased EDF budget post-2027.
9. Actionable Next Steps for Applicants
• Map consortium partners to EU defence data value chain: Data owners (MoDs), annotation SMEs, secure cloud providers, evaluation experts, standardisation bodies.
• Engage early with EU AI Act conformity assessment bodies to ensure challenge metrics align with forthcoming harmonised standards.
• Reserve budget for liaison with ETSI TC INT & CEN/CENELEC JTC 21 to fast-track metric standard proposals.
• Design WP for "Spin-off exploitation" to connect with EIC Transition and national Defence Innovation Funds.
Bottom Line: Leveraging EU-wide scale turns this technological challenge from a one-off benchmark into the cornerstone of a European ecosystem for trustworthy, multilingual, privacy-preserving dialogue systems that serve both defence and civilian markets, while reinforcing Europe’s strategic autonomy in AI.
🏷️ Keywords
Ready to Apply?
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See in 5 min if you're eligible for Privacy-preserving human-AI dialogue systems – Organisation of a technological challenge offering max €20.0M funding