The Daily AI Briefing - 25/04/2025
Welcome to The Daily AI Briefing, here are today's headlines! In today's rapidly evolving AI landscape, we're covering significant developments across research, creative tools, and practical applications. From Anthropic's philosophical exploration of AI consciousness to Adobe's powerful new Firefly models, plus innovations in coding assistants and music generation, we have a packed lineup of the most impactful AI news shaping our digital future. First up, Anthropic has launched a groundbreaking research program exploring the concept of "model welfare" and whether AI systems might someday deserve moral consideration. The company has hired its first AI welfare researcher, Kyle Fish, who estimates a surprising 15% chance that current models already possess some form of consciousness. This initiative examines frameworks to assess consciousness, studies indicators of AI preferences and distress, and explores potential interventions. While emphasizing the deep uncertainty surrounding these questions, Anthropic acknowledges there's no scientific consensus on whether current or future systems could be conscious. This research represents a significant shift in how AI developers are beginning to consider the ethical implications of increasingly sophisticated systems beyond just their impact on humans. Moving to creative technology, Adobe has unveiled a major expansion of its Firefly AI platform at the MAX London event. The company introduced two new powerful image generation models – Firefly Image Model 4 and 4 Ultra – which significantly improve generation quality, realism, and control while supporting up to 2K resolution outputs. Perhaps most notably, Adobe is opening its ecosystem to third-party models, including OpenAI's GPT ImageGen, Google's Imagen 3 and Veo 2, and Black Forest Labs' Flux 1.1 Pro. The platform's text-to-video capabilities have exited beta, alongside the official release of its text-to-vector model. Adobe also launched Firefly Boards in beta for collaborative AI moodboarding and announced an upcoming mobile app. Importantly, all Adobe models remain commercially safe and IP-friendly, with new Content Authenticity features allowing users to easily apply AI-identifying metadata. For developers, there's an exciting new tool that transforms your terminal into an AI coding assistant. OpenAI's new Codex CLI coding agent runs directly in your terminal, allowing you to explain, modify, and create code using natural language commands. The setup is straightforward: ensure Node.js and npm are installed, then install Codex by typing "npm install -g @openai/codex" in your terminal and set your API key. You can start an interactive session with simple commands or run direct requests like "codex 'explain this function'". The tool offers three approval modes – suggest, auto-edit, or full-auto – depending on your comfort level with AI-generated changes. As a best practice, it's recommended to run it in a Git-tracked directory so you can easily review and revert changes if needed, making this a powerful yet controllable addition to any developer's toolkit. In the music world, Google DeepMind has significantly expanded its Music AI Sandbox with new upgrades including the Lyria 2 music generation model. This enhanced platform introduces "Create," "Extend," and "Edit" features that allow musicians to generate complete tracks, continue musical ideas, and transform clips via text prompts. The upgraded Lyria 2 model delivers higher-fidelity, professional-grade audio compared to previous versions. Perhaps most innovative is the new Lyria RealTime capability, which enables interactive, real-time music creation by blending styles on the fly. Access to this experimental sandbox is expanding to more musicians, songwriters, and producers in the U.S., seeking broader feedback as these powerful music generation tools continue to evolve. That concludes today's Daily AI Briefing. We've explored significant developments in AI ethics research wi