Motivated by the challenges, risks and opportunities that the wide use of AI brings to media, society and politics, AI4Media aspires to become a centre of excellence and a wide network of researchers across Europe and beyond, with a focus on delivering the next generation of core AI advances to serve the key sector of Media, to make sure that the European values of ethical and trustworthy AI are embedded in future AI deployments, and to reimagine AI as a crucial beneficial enabling technology in the service of Society and Media. The AI4Media consortium, comprising 30 leading partners in the areas of AI and media (9 universities, 9 research centres, 12 industrial partners) and 35 associate members, will establish the networking infrastructure to bring together the currently fragmented European AI landscape in the field of media, and foster deeper and long-running interactions between academia and industry, including Digital Innovation Hubs. It will also shape a research agenda for media AI research, and implement research and innovation both with respect to cutting-edge technologies at the core of AI research, and within specific fields of media-related AI. AI4Media will provide a targeted funding framework through open calls, to speed up the uptake of innovations developed within the network. A PhD programme will further enhance links to the industry and the fostering and exchange of talent, while providing motivation to prevent brain drain, and a set of use cases will be developed by the network to demonstrate the impact of the achieved advances in the media sector. The Excellence Centre that is established during the AI4Media project, and the ecosystem that will grow around it, will provide a long-term basis for the support of AI excellence in Europe, long after the project end, with the aim of ensuring that Ethical AI guided by European values assumes a global leading role in the field of Media.

While it is not initially included within the three 5G key use cases identified in the reference document of UIT-R published in 2015, broadband Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) is seen by many 5G actors as the first phase of commercial 5G services, to support emerging applications (4K video streaming, Virtual Reality, etc.). Indeed, thanks to the huge amount of spectrum recently released for 5G, including sub-6 GHz bands, FWA allows rapid deployment of novel services at rates sufficiently high to satisfy the needs of future domestic users, at competitive costs in comparison with optical fibre, either in rural areas where the density of homes could not justify an investment in an optical fibre network or in urban/suburban areas where it is not always possible to dig trenches to pass fibre. The FWA user equipment is generally made of an outdoor unit using directive antenna in LOS of 5G small cell Access Point connected through Power Over Ethernet cable to an indoor unit where received signals are routed towards various home equipment’s. The use of a single indoor unit (5G Gateway), could be very attractive: simplified “all in one” product, reduced installation and equipment cost and more flexibility in choosing where to place the 5G-Gateway. However, it requires to operate in the sub-6GHz bands and combine several technologies including Carrier Aggregation and antenna beamforming. Consequently, several challenges should be addressed such as propagation issues including indoor signal penetration loss, interferences, multipath frequency selective fading, as well as the integration of the 5G radio modules and antennas within an increasingly small box. This implies very stringent requirements from the antenna system side in terms of compactness, number of decorrelated and/or directional reconfigurable radiation patterns, with the possibility of simultaneous operation in multiple frequency bands. The objective of COMET-5G project is to leverage on recent and ongoing advances on antenna technologies to address the above issues. By developing adequate modeling and simulation electromagnetic tools and pushing further disruptive concepts (Superdirectivity, coupled array, Network Characteristic Mode theory, Spherical Wave Expansion theory), several designs of ultra-compact though efficient, multi-frequency, miniature antenna radiators, grouped in 3D arrangements to optimally occupy and probably shape the volume of the 5G-Gateway will be designed, realized and measured. Then a compelling demonstrator of an indoor 5G box, integrating sub-antenna systems developed within the project, and illustrating the achieved scientific and technological progress, will be prototyped and tested. The COMET-5G project associates complementary skills of an academic laboratory (IETR-Rennes) specializing in the development of complex antennas, an EPIC (CEA-LETI) European leader in microelectronic technology for telecommunications and an industrial (Technicolor) world leading provider of ultra-broadband access solutions. All the three partners are increasingly working together since many years in collaborative projects, such as the ANR NAOMI project or more recently the ANR SENSAS project. The scientific ambition of COMET-5G project is to solve the current limitations associated with small-sized antennas in terms of the ability to focus energy in privileged directions and frequency bandwidth requirement. The proposed solutions could then revolutionize the art of designing high gain antennas by making them compact and allowing their use in many applications until then inaccessible due to the incompatible size of the antenna. From the broadband access perspective, the development of a single indoor 5G-box achieving gigabit throughputs, and thus presenting a complete parity in terms of performances with wired networks, will offer a unique opportunity to cable companies and telco’s to enter into new markets, expanding beyond the niches of hybrid or nomadic access.

The INVICTUS project aims at delivering innovative authoring tools for the creation of a new generation of high-fidelity avatars (numerical representations of real humans) and the integration of these avatars in interactive and non-interactive narratives (movies, games, AR+VR immersive productions). The project proposes to (i) exploit the full potential of recent volumetric motion capture technologies that consist in capturing simultaneously the appearance (shape, texture, material) and motion of actors using simple RGB cameras to create volumetric avatars, and (ii) rely on these technologies to design narratives using novel collaborative VR authoring tools. INVICTUS proposes the design of three innovative authoring tools: a tool to perform high-resolution volumetric captures of both appearance and motion of characters and that will enable their exploitation in both high-end off-line productions (film quality) and real-time rendering productions. This will ease high-fidelity content creation and reduce costs through less manual labor. a tool to perform edits on high-fidelity volumetric appearances and motions, such as transferring shapes between characters, performing stylization of appearance, adapting and transferring motions. This will reduce manual labor and improve fidelity. a story authoring tool that will build on VR interactive technologies to plunge storytellers in virtual representations of their stories to edit decors, layouts and animated characters, improving productivity and creativity. By demonstrating and communicating on how these technologies can be immediately exploited in both traditional media (films/animation) and novel media (VR + AR) narratives, the INVICTUS project will open opportunities in the EU market for more compelling, immersive and personalized visual experiences, at the crossroads of film and game entertainment.

6G networks, currently only existing as concepts, are envisioned as portals to a fully digitized society, where the physical and virtual world are blended via boundless Extended Reality (XR), and also as an enabler for the Digital and Green transformation of the European Industries. To support this vision, the network capacity must be increased at least by an order of magnitude, while infrastructures must be transformed into a very dense continuum. Thus, academia and industry have shifted their attention to the investigation of a new generation of Smart Networks and infrastructures. It is clear that to win this race towards shaping the next-generation communication ecosystem, a new generation of testbed infrastructures and breakthrough research and technology development is needed needed, as well as a new generation of testbeds to support future research initiative. To this end, 6G-BRICKS aims to deliver a new 6G facility, building on the baseline of mature ICT-52 platforms, that bring breakthrough cell-free and RIS technologies that have shown promise for beyond 5G networks. Moreover, novel unified control paradigms based on Explainable AI and Machine Reasoning are explored. All enablers will be delivered in the form of reusable components with open APIs, termed “bricks“. Finally, initial integrations with O-RAN are performed, aiming for the future-proofing and interoperability of 6G-BRICKS outcomes.

Artificial Intelligence is a disruptive technology of our times with expected impacts rivalling those of electricity or printing. Resources for innovation are currently dominated by giant tech companies in North America and China. To ensure European independence and leadership, we must invest wisely by bundling, connecting and opening our AI resources. AI4EU will efficiently build a comprehensive European AI-on-demand platform to lower barriers to innovation, to boost technology transfer and catalyse the growth of start-ups and SMEs in all sectors through Open calls and other actions. The platform will act as a broker, developer and one-stop shop providing and showcasing services, expertise, algorithms, software frameworks, development tools, components, modules, data, computing resources, prototyping functions and access to funding. Training will enable different user communities (engineers, civic leaders, etc.) to obtain skills and certifications. The AI4EU Platform will establish a world reference, built upon and interoperable with existing AI and data components (e.g. the Acumos open-source framework, QWT search engine..) and platforms. It will mobilize the whole European AI ecosystem and already unites 80 partners in 21 countries including researchers, innovators and related talents. Eight industry-driven AI pilots will demonstrate the value of the platform as an innovation tool. In order to enhance the platform, research on five key interconnected AI scientific areas will be carried out using platform technologies and results will be implemented. The pilots and research will showcase how AI4EU can stimulate scientific discovery and technological innovation. The AI4EU Ethical Observatory will be established to ensure the respect of human centred AI values and European regulations. Sustainability will be ensured via the creation of the AI4EU Foundation. The results will feed a new and comprehensive Strategic Research Innovation Agenda for Europe.