ai

Teachers become intelligence coaches in AI-driven learning

AI is reshaping education, pushing teachers to act as intelligence coaches and co-creators instead of traditional instructors.

Experts at an international conference, hosted in Greece, to celebrate Athens College’s centennial, discussed how AI personalises learning and demands a redefined teaching role.

Bill McDiarmid, professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina, said educators must now ask students where they find their information and why they trust it.

Similarly, Yong Zhao of the University of Kansas highlighted that AI enables individualised learning, allowing every student to achieve their full potential.

Speakers agreed AI should serve as a supportive partner, not a replacement, helping schools prepare students for an active role in shaping their futures.

The event, held under Greek President Konstantinos Tasoulas’ auspices, also urged caution when experimenting with AI on minors due to potential long-term risks.

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Maserati’s new campaign pits human emotion against machine precision

Luxury automobile manufacturer Maserati has launched a new campaign titled ‘Do AIs Dream of Driving?’, created in collaboration with creative agency DUDE and production studio Studio FM.

The 60-second film imagines an advanced AI named ‘Leonardo’ that knows every specification and blueprint of Maserati’s own Nettuno engine, yet, despite this knowledge, cannot experience the emotion, thrill and sensory feel of driving.

The film opens in a futuristic environment where Leonardo narrates the engine’s performance, its 630 hp output, its combustion architecture and Italian engineering heritage. Yet, alongside sleek imagery of Maseratis in motion, Leonardo glitches subtly, illustrating the distinction between technical perfection and human experience.

From a creative standpoint, the campaign intentionally integrates AI in the production process, not as a cost-cutting measure, but as a storytelling device. The protagonist was cast in the traditional human way; his digital twin was generated via AI.

The setting and styling drew from AI-assisted visual research but retained human oversight. Studio FM asserts all stages from casting to post-production adhered to an ethical protocol to protect rights and ensure transparency.

The campaign will run globally across Maserati’s social media channels (Instagram, Facebook, YouTube) and highlights a new phase in how automotive brands use generative AI, not just to showcase specs, but to evoke emotion and identity.

Creative Director Chiara Monticelli (DUDE Milan) noted that the project represented ‘an important step forward … where AI supports and enhances human creativity without replacing it.’

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Nexos.ai raises €30 m to ease enterprise AI adoption

The European startup Nexos.ai, headquartered in Vilnius, Lithuania, has closed a €30 million Series A funding round, co-led by Index Ventures and Evantic Capital, valuing the company at about €300 million (~US $350 million).

Founded by the duo behind cybersecurity unicorn Nord Security (Tomas Okmanas and Eimantas Sabaliauskas), Nexos.ai aims to solve what they describe as the ‘enterprise AI adoption crisis’. In their view, many organisations struggle with governance, cost control, fragmentation and security risks when using large-language models (LLMs).

Nexos.ai’s platform comprises two main components: an AI Workspace for employees and an AI Gateway for developers.

The Gateway offers orchestration across 200+ models, unified access, guardrails, cost monitoring and compliance oversight. The Workspace enables staff to work across formats, compare models and collaborate in a secure interface.

The company’s positioning as a neutral intermediary, likened to ‘Switzerland for LLMs’, underscores its mission to allow enterprises to gain productivity with AI without giving up data control or security.

The new funds will be used to extend support for private model deployment, expand into regulated sectors (finance, public institutions), grow across Europe and North America, and deepen product capabilities in routing, model fallback, and observability.

It’s an illustration of how investors are backing infrastructure plays in the enterprise-AI space: not just building new models, but creating the scaffolding for how organisations adopt, govern and deploy them safely.

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Fenland business to close as AI reshapes media work

A Fenland videographer says the rise of AI has forced him to close his business. David Johnson, who runs DMJ-Imagery in Chatteris, will wind up operations in April after client demand collapsed.

He believes companies are turning to AI tools for projects once requiring human filmmakers and editors. Work such as promotional videos, adverts, and scripting has increasingly been replaced by automated content generation.

Johnson said his workload ‘plummeted’ over the past year despite surviving the pandemic. He described AI-made work as lacking ‘passion or emotion’, arguing that human creativity remains an essential component to storytelling.

Despite this, the UK government says AI has vast economic potential, industry groups urge fairer protections for creatives. They argue that existing copyright laws do not adequately safeguard work used to train AI models.

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Adobe unveils AI Foundry for enterprise model building

Adobe has launched a new enterprise service allowing firms to build custom AI models. The platform, called Adobe AI Foundry, lets companies train generative AI on their branding and intellectual property.

Based on Adobe’s Firefly models, the service can produce text, images, video, and 3D content. Pricing depends on usage, offering greater flexibility than Adobe’s traditional subscription model.

Adobe’s Firefly technology, first introduced in 2023, has already helped clients create over 25 billion assets. Foundry’s tailored models are expected to speed up campaign production while maintaining consistent brand identity across markets.

Hannah Elsakr, Adobe’s vice president for generative AI ventures, said the tools aim to enhance, not replace, human creativity. She emphasised that Adobe’s mission remains centred on supporting artists and marketers in telling powerful stories through technology.

The company believes its ethical approach to AI training and licensing could set a standard for enterprise-grade creative tools. Analysts say it also positions Adobe strongly against rivals offering generic AI solutions.

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Anthropic unveils Claude Life Sciences to transform research efficiency

Anthropic has unveiled Claude for Life Sciences, its first major launch in the biotechnology sector.

The new platform integrates Anthropic’s AI models with leading scientific tools such as Benchling, PubMed, 10x Genomics and Synapse.org, offering researchers an intelligent assistant throughout the discovery process.

The system supports tasks from literature reviews and hypothesis development to data analysis and drafting regulatory submissions. According to Anthropic, what once took days of validation and manual compilation can now be completed in minutes, giving scientists more time to focus on innovation.

An initiative that follows the company’s appointment of Eric Kauderer-Abrams as head of biology and life sciences. He described the move as a ‘threshold moment’, signalling Anthropic’s ambition to make Claude a key player in global life science research, much like its role in coding.

Built on the newly released Claude Sonnet 4.5 model, which excels at interpreting lab protocols, the platform connects with partners including AWS, Google Cloud, KPMG and Deloitte.

While Anthropic recognises that AI cannot accelerate physical trials, it aims to transform time-consuming processes and promote responsible digital transformation across the life sciences.

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China leads the global generative AI adoption with 515 million users

In China, the use of generative AI has expanded unprecedentedly, reaching 515 million users in the first half of 2025.

The figure, released by the China Internet Network Information Centre, shows more than double the number recorded in December and represents an adoption rate of 36.5 per cent.

Such growth is driven by strong digital infrastructure and the state’s determination to make AI a central tool of national development.

The country’s ‘AI Plus’ strategy aims to integrate AI across all sectors of society and the economy. The majority of users rely on domestic platforms such as DeepSeek, Alibaba Cloud’s Qwen and ByteDance’s Doubao, as access to leading Western models remains restricted.

Young and well-educated citizens dominate the user base, underlining the government’s success in promoting AI literacy among key demographics.

Microsoft’s recent research confirms that China has the world’s largest AI market, surpassing the US in total users. While the US adoption has remained steady, China’s domestic ecosystem continues to accelerate, fuelled by policy support and public enthusiasm for generative tools.

China also leads the world in AI-related intellectual property, with over 1.5 million patent applications accounting for nearly 39 per cent of the global total.

The rapid adoption of home-grown AI technologies reflects a strategic drive for technological self-reliance and positions China at the forefront of global digital transformation.

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Google Cloud and NVIDIA join forces to accelerate enterprise AI and industrial digitalisation

NVIDIA and Google Cloud are expanding their collaboration to bring advanced AI computing to a wider range of enterprise workloads.

The new Google Cloud G4 virtual machines, powered by NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPUs, are now generally available, combining high-performance computing with scalability for AI, design, and industrial applications.

An announcement that also makes NVIDIA Omniverse and Isaac Sim available on the Google Cloud Marketplace, offering enterprises new tools for digital twin development, robotics simulation, and AI-driven industrial operations.

These integrations enable customers to build realistic virtual environments, train intelligent systems, and streamline design processes.

Powered by the Blackwell architecture, the RTX PRO 6000 GPUs support next-generation AI inference and advanced graphics capabilities. Enterprises can use them to accelerate complex workloads ranging from generative and agentic AI to high-fidelity simulations.

The partnership strengthens Google Cloud’s AI infrastructure and cements NVIDIA’s role as the leading provider of end-to-end computing for enterprise transformation.

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Samsung unveils AI-powered redesign of its corporate Newsroom

The South Korean firm, Samsung Electronics, has redesigned its official Newsroom, transforming it into a multimedia platform built around visuals, video and AI-driven features.

A revamped site that aligns with the growing dominance of visual communication, aiming to make corporate storytelling more intuitive, engaging and accessible.

The updated homepage features an expanded horizontal carousel showcasing videos, graphics and feature stories with hover-based summaries for quick insight. Users can browse by theme, play videos directly and enjoy a seamless experience across all Samsung devices.

A redesign by Samsung that also introduces an integrated media hub with improved press tools, content filters and high-resolution downloads. Journalists can now save full articles, videos and images in one click, simplifying access to media materials.

AI integration adds smart summaries and upgraded search capabilities, including tag- and image-based discovery. These tools enhance relevance and retrieval speed, while flexible sorting and keyword highlighting refine user experience.

As Samsung celebrates a decade since launching its Newsroom, such a transformation marks a step toward a more dynamic, interactive communication model designed for both consumers and media professionals in the AI era.

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UK actors’ union demands rights as AI uses performers’ likenesses without consent

The British performers’ union Equity has warned of coordinated mass action against technology companies and entertainment producers that use its members’ images, voices or likenesses in artificial-intelligence-generated content without proper consent.

Equity’s general secretary, Paul W Fleming, announced plans to mobilise tens of thousands of actors through subject access requests under data-protection law, compelling companies to disclose whether they have used performers’ data in AI content.

The move follows growing numbers of complaints from actors about alleged mis-use of their likenesses or voices in AI material. One prominent case involves Scottish actor Briony Monroe, who claims her facial features and mannerisms were used to create the synthetic performer ‘Tilly Norwood’. The AI-studio behind the character denies the allegations.

Equity says the strategy is intended to ‘make it so hard for tech companies and producers to not enter into collective rights’ deals. It argues that existing legislation is being circumvented as foundational AI models are trained using data from actors, but with little transparency or compensation.

The trade body Pact, representing studios and producers, acknowledges the importance of AI but counters that without accessing new tools firms may fall behind commercially. Pact complains about the lack of transparency from companies on what data is used to train AI systems.

In essence, the standoff reflects deeper tensions in the creative industries: how to balance innovation, performer rights and transparency in an era when digital likenesses and synthetic ‘actors’ are emerging rapidly.

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