AI Roundup: New Gemini 2.5 Models, Adobe Firefly Mobile App, OpenAI For Gov And More

With the way the interest, investments, and innovations in the artificial intelligence (AI) and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) sectors are increasing, it’s no surprise that almost every passing day comes with major headlines—some positive, some negative.

The latest round of positive news comes courtesy of sector leader OpenAI, major competitor Google, and design and media editing giant Adobe.
 

Google’s New Gemini 2.5 Models

Google announced that it has released stable versions of Gemini 2.5 Flash and Gemini 2.5 Pro, making them generally available.

“We designed Gemini 2.5 to be a family of hybrid reasoning models that provide amazing performance, while also being at the Pareto Frontier of cost and speed,” said Google, as it thanked all testers for their feedback.

The tech giant also listed developers (Spline and Rooms) and organizations (Snap and SmartBear) that have begun using the latest versions in production.

At the same time, Google introduced Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite, which it describes as its most cost-efficient and fastest 2.5 model yet, offering all-around higher quality than 2.0 Flash-Lite on coding, math, science, reasoning, and multimodal benchmarks.

“It comes with the same capabilities that make Gemini 2.5 helpful, including the ability to turn thinking on at different budgets, connecting to tools like Google Search and code execution, multimodal input, and a 1 million-token context length,” Google said.


Google’s Gemini family of models is also being used by the UK government to enable faster, more informed planning decisions through a unique new system called Extract, which uses Gemini’s advanced visual reasoning and multi-modal capabilities to turn old planning documents into clear, digital data.

This includes enhancing blurry maps and handwritten notes into legible media, speeding up the time it takes to process housing and infrastructure planning applications. The system allows

Currently, converting a single planning document takes up to 2 hours when done manually, and with hundreds of thousands of documents in contention, planning becomes a major hassle.

“The new generative AI tool will turn old planning documents—including blurry maps and handwritten notes—into clear, digital data in just 40 seconds—drastically reducing the time it takes planners,” the UK government said. It will allow them to provide more efficient planning services with simpler processes and democratized information.

When it comes to helping governments, OpenAI has something new in the bag.
 

OpenAI For Government

OpenAI announced the launch of OpenAI for Government, a new initiative that brings the company’s most advanced AI tools to United States government agencies and officials.

The initiative combines OpenAI’s existing efforts, previously announced customers and partnerships, and its ChatGPT Gov platform. The company will also provide custom models for national security, hands-on support, and insights into what is coming next.

“We're supporting the U.S. government's efforts in adopting best-in-class technology and deploying these tools in service of the public good,” said OpenAI. “Our goal is to unlock AI solutions that enhance the capabilities of government workers, help them cut down on the red tape and paperwork, and let them do more of what they come to work each day to do: serve the American people.”

The move also comes with OpenAI being awarded a $200 million contract to provide the U.S. Department of Defense

OpenAI’s first partnership under the initiative will be a pilot program with the U.S. Department of Defense, which comes with the AI leader being awarded a $200 million contract to provide them with frontier AI tools that can transform day-to-day and other administrative operations.

The announcement comes just days after the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, announced the cuts in the D.O.D. agency responsible for testing and evaluating the safety of weapons and AI systems, with the aim to reduce “bloated bureaucracy and wasteful spending in favor of increased lethality.”

As such, Hegseth revealed that he was reducing the staff of the Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, or ODOT&E, by more than half—retaining 30 civilians, 15 military personnel, and 1 senior leader. The agency was established in the 1980s.

On the other end of the line, OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, revealed that Meta was offering key OpenAI employees bonuses of $100 million to recruit them, as the company looked to double down on its superintelligence efforts.


“They (Meta) started making giant offers to a lot of people on our team. You know, like $100 million signing bonuses, more than that (in) compensation per year,” Altman said, adding, “At least, so far, none of our best people have decided to take them up on that.”
 

Adobe Firefly Mobile App, New Partnerships, And More

Leader of creative ideation, design software, and media editing tools, Adobe recently announced an expansion of the coveted Adobe Firefly, its AI-assisted content ideation, creation, and production platform.

This includes bringing the GenAI-assisted image and video generation capabilities to phones!

Adobe Firefly’s new dedicated iOS and Android apps are now available for users to download and “explore ideas and generate and edit images and videos from anywhere using AI.”

Firefly brings users the ability to create images and videos from simple text prompts, using the magic of GenAI to transform images into videos, add or remove objects, extend images, and more.

“Creators continue to impress us with the breadth and artistry of the images, videos, graphics and designs they’re dreaming up in the Firefly app using models from both Adobe and our partners,” said Ely Greenfield, SVP and CTO of Adobe. “Our goal with Firefly is to deliver creators the most comprehensive destination on web and mobile to access the best generative models from across the industry, in a single integrated experience from ideation to generation and editing.”

Available in public beta, the platform allows users to generate new videos using Adobe’s Firefly Video Model or with Google’s Veo 3, Luma AI’s Ray2, and Pika 2.2 text-to-video.

Furthermore, Adobe has grown its partnerships with leading AI developers, allowing it to integrate models from new partners such as Ideogram (Ideogram 3.0), Luma AI (Ray2), Pika (2.2 text-to-video) and Runway (Gen-4 Image), adding to the existing models from OpenAI, Google (Imagen 4 and Veo 3) and Black Forest Labs (Flux 1.1 Pro).


They say no good deed goes unpunished, and among all this positive AI news, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy brings a grim message.

According to a message shared with Amazon employees, AI is going to change how Amazon works. This includes needing fewer humans to execute current tasks carried out by humans. This will result in the company reducing its total corporate workforce as AI efficiency gains spread throughout the organization.

The message didn’t focus on the grim aspects of AI, but rather on how useful the technology is and how many sectors it is influencing and benefiting, including various processes and operations within Amazon.

“Today, we have over 1,000 Generative AI services and applications in progress or built, but at our scale, that’s a small fraction of what we will ultimately build. We’re going to lean in further in the coming months,” Jassy said, adding, “As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done.”


Jassy outlined three major changes GenAI will bring about. These include altering how humans work and live, the scope and speed of innovation, and how Amazon will operate going forward, transforming its internal culture to operate more like a fast-moving, customer-obsessed start-up driven by ownership and invention.

An Amazon spokesperson said that Jassy’s message doesn’t necessarily spell out layoffs but rather could offer employees voluntary early retirement packages.

What do you think about these developments? Do you think AI will lead to further job cuts?

Let us know in the comments below!