Adobe strengthens its position in AI-assisted creation with the launch of Firefly 4

Adobe is rolling out Firefly 4 and its variant "4 Ultra," offering more realistic and detailed images up to 2K, with enhanced control over style, format, and angle. A "style transfer" feature lets you apply a specific style using a reference image. Text generation is also improved, and upcoming video and editable vector models will integrate all creations (images, videos, audio, vectors) on a single platform. These advancements will be deployed across the entire Creative Cloud, maintaining content tagging to ensure authenticity.

• 22 billion pieces of content have already been generated with the Firefly family since its launch.

• 300 million users of the Creative Cloud suite and Firefly tools combined.

• Firefly 4 is touted as Adobe's fastest and most realistic image model to date, with an "Ultra" mode that handles very complex scenes.

• Beta integration into a new collaborative space (Firefly Boards) and mobile availability in the works.

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Donald Trump signs executive order mandating AI education in U.S. public high schools starting in the 2025-2026 school year

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to make the teaching of artificial intelligence mandatory in all K-12 curricula. Named "Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American Youth," it involves several federal agencies (Education, Labor, NSF...) to integrate AI into school programs and train teachers.
Specifically, this order establishes a national Task Force to launch a "Presidential AI Challenge," encouraging student and teacher projects. The plan also aims to increase the number of AI courses and certifications available to high school students, train teachers, and support research on AI use in education.

• An action plan must be established within 90 days, with initial initiatives launched within 12 months.

• 56 million students (elementary and secondary schools) affected.

• Several pilot states are expected to test the program as early as the fall of 2025, with funding still uncertain, relying on the reallocation of existing federal funds and private partnerships.

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Baidu unveils Ernie 4.5 Turbo and Ernie X1 Turbo: stepping up the competition with Deepseek and OpenAI

Baidu recently unveiled, during the Create 2025 conference in Wuhan, two new language models: Ernie 4.5 Turbo and Ernie X1 Turbo, succeeding Ernie 4.0. These next-gen AIs represent a notable leap in performance and aim to compete directly with Deepseek and OpenAI. Ernie 4.5 Turbo, for instance, stands out with a higher score than GPT-4 on certain multimodal tests (77.68 vs. 72.76) and offers optimized inference speed to handle a high volume of requests.

• Up to an 80% reduction in usage costs compared to the previous generation.

• Pricing example: ¥0.8 for 1 million input tokens and ¥3.2 for output on Ernie 4.5 Turbo.

• Already over 500 million daily requests.

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Dassault Systèmes and Airbus announce a strategic partnership to deploy virtual replicas for real-time simulation, analysis, and optimization of real systems

Airbus and Dassault Systèmes announce an enhanced partnership to accelerate the adoption of digital twins in aviation, through the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Now, the design, production, and maintenance of future Airbus aircraft will be managed in a unified virtual environment.
More than 20,000 engineers, technicians, and suppliers will work on these comprehensive digital models, allowing each component to be tested and validated before real manufacturing. Expected benefits include shortened development cycles (up to 30% faster) and reduced prototyping costs (20% to 40% savings).

• Airbus now creates each aircraft twice: first in the virtual world, then in the real one.

• 12,000 aircraft in service already have a digital twin, used for predictive maintenance.

• The alliance with Dassault Systèmes aims to support increased production pace and prepare the next generation of decarbonized aircraft.

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Constitutional Council vetoes extension of algorithmic video surveillance until 2027

The deployment of algorithmic video surveillance in France, authorized experimentally for securing the 2024 Olympics, has ended in line with the Constitutional Council's decision. Although deemed "in accordance with the Constitution" under strict conditions, the technology could only be used temporarily, and the legislator did not extend the authorization.

• Associations and the CNIL challenged the legitimacy and transparency of these systems.

• Any future reintroduction will require a new law and strengthened guarantees on privacy and individual freedoms.

• 485 AI-equipped cameras were deployed during the Olympics.

• Only 8 predefined scenarios were detected (crowd movements, abandoned packages, etc.) without facial recognition.

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