Funding on the Topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The German Research Foundation (DFG) funds scientific and public educational institutions nationwide within the framework of a strategic Artificial Intelligence Funding Initiative. The initiative is aimed at academic research institutions, scientific working groups, and individual researchers with a clear focus on AI method development or data corpus construction. The funding type is a non-repayable grant, which can be continuously applied for through various programs – including Emmy Noether Groups and data corpus competitions. Applications can be submitted continuously; specific deadlines depend on the respective subprograms. A prerequisite for funding is proof of affiliation with a German research institution or university as well as a research project with a clear focus on artificial intelligence methods or data corpus development.

The funding objective targets excellent methodological research to sustainably strengthen the integration of AI methods with subject-specific basic research. Special emphasis is placed on the development of high-quality, comprehensive data corpora for the (further) development of scientific AI applications. Principle-oriented standards such as FAIR and CARE are observed, and the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) is incorporated. By providing systematically curated, annotated, and aggregated datasets, both new research opportunities and improvements in scientific information infrastructures are to be enabled. Thus, the initiative promotes the international competitiveness of German AI research and supports the establishment of pioneering research networks in the digital age.