Earlier this week, Adobe launched its Firefly Image Model 4, further improving quality, speed, and control over structure, style, and resolution up to 2K alongside the higher-detail Image Model 4 Ultra. The Firefly video model is now generally available for 1080p text-to-video generation, leveraging models like OpenAI's new GPT image generation, Google's Imagen 3 and Veo 2, and Flux's FLUX 1.1 Pro. Adobe has also redesigned the Firefly web app to consolidate all available AI models, both its own and those of third parties, into one interface, with a mobile app for Firefly also in progress.
With Google very much at risk of being forced to sell off Chrome due to its online search monopoly, OpenAI has voiced its interest in buying the browser, according to ChatGPT's head of product, Nick Turley, in a statement. Framing it as a means to better ChatGPT's integration and distribution, Turley revealed OpenAI had actually approached Google last year for a search API partnership, citing "significant quality issues" with its current "Provider No. 1." He also admitted that the company's ambition to shift 80% of queries to its own search index by 2025 was overly optimistic, but acquiring Chrome would be a significant help.
On the 23rd of April, US President Trump signed an executive order directing the Education and Labor Departments to develop AI courses, certification programs, and teacher-training grants for K-12 high schools. It states that The National Science Foundation must prioritize research on the use of AI in education, while the Labor Department has to expand AI-related apprenticeships. The order also establishes a White House Task Force on AI Education to launch a "Presidential AI Challenge" that will focus on highlighting and encouraging the use of AI in the classroom.
Speaking at the Hamm Institute conference, Amazon Web Services' Kevin Miller said there's been "no significant change" in AI data center demand and that "the numbers [are] only going up" after reports of AWS pausing data center leases began to circulate. Likewise, Nvidia senior executive Josh Parker sees no pullback either, calling market fears and its reaction to DeepSeek "kneejerk." Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark stated that AI will require 50 gigawatts of new power capacity by 2027, and considering that that is the equivalent of about 50 new nuclear plants, data centers will continue to have a demand to meet.
Regardless of whether it is likely that future AI could be "conscious" or not, Anthropic isn't ruling out the possibility as it announced a "model welfare" research program. Led by Kyle Fish, the company's first "AI welfare" researcher, the program will investigate whether future neural networks could attain consciousness and what measures would protect their welfare. Despite opinions between industry experts and academics being wildly divided on the subject, Anthropic says it will "approach the topic with humility and with as few assumptions as possible."
Endor Labs, originally focused on open-source dependency security, has pivoted to snuffing out security vulnerabilities in AI-generated code and closed a $93 million-value Series B led by DFJ Growth, valuing the company "orders of magnitude higher" than its Series A. Endor Labs' platform scans code via plugins for tools like GitHub Copilot, flags vulnerabilities, and applies "precise" fixes automatically. Currently, Endor protects over 5 million applications and performs more than 1 million weekly scans for customers ranging from OpenAI to Dropbox to Peloton.
Business messaging platform Manychat has raised $140 million in a Series B to expand its AI-powered engagement tools and international operations with the round led by Summit Partners. The company serves 1.5 million customers in roughly 170 countries, including the likes of Nike, the New York Times, and Yahoo, sending billions of messages annually across TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. Remarkably, unlike the vast majority of startups, Manychat is "mostly profitable" due to always operating "on the edge of being kind of break even."