HackAI was my first hackathon where I paired up with a random group of people. In honor of tax season (RIP), we decided to make a personal tax assistant. The app was tailored towards inexperienced filers who want a quick and private way to optimize and analyze their tax metrics by simply uploading their tax forms.
We used the Azure Document Inference API for this POC, which supports all 800 tax form types from their extensive fine-tuned models. I made a script that implemented PPI (personal identifiable information) redaction locally.
I discovered while filing my taxes on HR Block that their chat bot responses were too generalized, so I used this source of inspiration to add a chat bot that was more personalized.
A couple days later, I found out that someone built a similar idea in their spare time but better.
One big downside from this experience was when I realized the reality of how judging goes. Whilst I tried extending a useful POC feature from a heavily-utilized government requirement, most of the winners made a generic B2B-SaaS with an AI wrapper. Either that, or their project was bloatware.