First Hackathon Winning Project

Rahel Gunaratne's WebIndexer won first place at AI21 Labs' first hackathon. It's an AI question-answering tool that lets users find information within web pages using questions instead of keywords, providing a more natural browsing experience when integrated into websites.

The event, held together with Lablab AI, started on January 13 and ended on the 21st, with over 1,900 participants and 24 projects competing. Judging was handled by Yuval Belfer, Yotam Shinan, Jack Yulzari, and a NewNative representative, evaluating projects on innovation, real-world problem-solving, code completeness, and documentation.

Three projects made the runner-up list.

• Kitchen Genie: An AI cooking tool that reduces food waste by recommending dishes that can be made using only the ingredients left in your fridge
• T.E.A (Test English AI): A web app that generates personalized English test practice based on IELTS Academic and general reading comprehension tasks
• MedBrief: A tool that summarizes long patient records, highlights key medical terms, and also supports question answering based on medical records

Jack Yulzari noted that the submissions were close to production quality and that a wide range of innovative ideas addressing real-world problems emerged.