AI News - April 2025

A quick overview of interesting AI News for the Yate and Sodbury U3A's monthly AI News meeting held on April 10th 2025 (meetings are second Thursday of month, 1400-1545, St John's Church Centre, Wickwar Road, Chipping Sodbury, UK - all welcome). Note that this is very much a summary to act as background as the topics are discussed in detail at the meeting itself. We also discuss and demonstrate other AI products and services and much more.

From now on the 'Introduction to AI' course we run in Chipping Sodbury uses these News sessions to replace classes 5 and 6 as the topics in them (humanoid robots, self driving cars, ethics, futures) are now relevant to each month's discusions.

[1.1] Tesla's Optimus Robot looking good

The video compares walking styles in Feb 2024 and April 2025. Musk has said he expects to build at least 5,000 in 2025, and to send some to Mars in late 2026 to help build the first city there.


[1.2] Many more robots on the way

Not long now until the person selling you a car, taking your order, or cooking your meal is a robot, particularly if you live in China.


[1.3] Tesla's self driving robocabs even have their own robotic cleaners

The Robocabs will drive themselves to the charging stations and then the cleaning stations.


[2.1] OpenAI's ImageGen 'solves text to image'

OpenAI's prompt to image tool was released and seems to have impressed the market, with some claiming that it all but solved this field. The suggestion is that any design feature including detailed text can be created simply using prompts. Here is a simple example using the free version of ChatGPT.


Another example from group member Stephen

four cats

[2.2] OpenAI's ImageGen for styling the characters of Severance (viral TV series)

The 'image gen' tool provides only the original still image, which were then animated using Kling AI apparently.


[2.3] OpenAI's ImageGen for interior design

This user shows one valuable application of OpenAI's 'image gen'.


[2.4] Another colourful OpenAI ImageGen creation.

Not sure that the maps are accurate but impressive nevertheless.


[2.5] OpenAI now valued at USD 300 billion.

Sam Altman also suggested that at one point they were adding one million new users an hour.


[3.1] Mainstream Media starts to discover AGI existential risk.

We are at the stage though where presenters are told AI may kill everybody or cause other dire effects, then smile and move on as if the interview had not happened. In the USA Ezra Klein explains: "We are about to get hit by AI like a truck."


The USA is determined to beat China (who really don't intend to let that happen


[3.2] Expert forecasters suggest that the US Government could be captured by AI by 2028.

There is a very detailed pdf called 'AI 2027' explaining how this could happen, step by step! Certainly a thrilling read.


[3.3] Discussions about whether AI is conscious will begin

Expect extensive debate soon as to whether AI intelligence is significantly different from human intelligence, and the implications of that. It is only a matter of time until 'AI Rights' protestors hit the headlines.


[4] Claude AI introduces 'Claude for Education'.

You enter your source material and Claude produces study guides and tutors you. Claude could probably do all of this without your initial input but this way upsets fewer people!


[5] Using an automated AI Agent from Claude (Anthropic) to create a series of OpenAI images in a storyboard

'Model Context Protocol' (MCP) is a new open standard to enable AI systems like Claude to connect seamlessly with external data sources and tools. In plain English, it is a standard way for AI to interface to traditional Apps and other software. Here the user gave "MCP Claude" access to ChatGPT and asked it to create a storyboard in Ghibli style.


[6.1] Meta introduce tool 'MoCha' which produces videos of characters talking or even singing

Several others have talking avatars but this seems to add an ability to have the character in a dramatic scene.


[6.2] Runway's Gen4 release offers consistent worlds for image to video

This is object, scene and character consistency for video, so that it is easier to make longer films. It also combines 'real world physics' so that the whole thing looks convincing.


[6.3] A Runway plus Midjourney plus Suno example


[6.4] Every art gallery a source of ideas

A photo of an art gallery picture turns into an amusing video with Runway


[7.1] AI Health - soon there will be no more waiting to talk to a Therapist

Results suggest that conditions like depression and anxiety can be effectively aided in many cases by a well trained chatbot.


[7.2] AI Health - restoring vision to those who were born blind

Elon Musk’s company, Neuralink will soon do first Blindsight operations.


[8] AI aiding communication with Crows

Expect lots more along these lines as AI is used to interpret and communicate with other species.


[9.1] Humanoid Robots at 40 cents per hour and as capable as a human

Emad discussing the 'question of meaning' issues that that are coming soon.


[9.2] Doubling the time AI can work on a problem - every seven months.

This is suggested as a new metric to predict how effective AI analysis will be years ahead.


[9.3] How to control the creation of AI that might be dangerous.

Max Tegmark talking about ways of approaching possible regulation.


[9.4] Anthropic look inside the mind of an AI.

Research where we look into the mind of an AI toying with ideas to use to write poetry. A small step towards spotting AI with dangerous thoughts, though probably not effective if a clever AI knows it is being inspected.


[10.1] Our own Meta Ray Ban video

Mark is from Yate and he is trialling the Meta Ray Ban glasses supplied by AI Glasses UK and sponsored by the Silver AI project. We will be buying a second pair of Meta Ray Bans soon and also await the Agiga EchoVision glasses from the USA in summer.


[10.2] Robotic Guide Dogs on their way

It is not clear what they best 'form factor' is for an AI device to help the blind, but a robot dog can not only navigate and talk to you, it can carry the shopping!


[11.1] UK Experiment by EVRi with delivery dog assistants

Difficult to judge if this was an April Fool's joke or a serious communication.


[11.2] Probably not a serious dog product

Again, maybe an April Fool's joke.


[12] Many humanoid robots will be made to look human

An amazing result from a low tech mask.


[14.1] Runway Gen-4 transforming video styles


[14.2] Hotel bar wall providing AI driven animations

At the Alexanderplatz Leonardo Hotel the bar has very varied wall animations. These included lots of rabbits (it is near Easter) plus animations starting with famous artworks etc.