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It’s been a huge month in AI. OpenAI teased the launch of GPT-5, Meta made a $14B play, and Midjourney added video. We’ve rounded up the standout developments in tools, business, policy, and real-world impact - all in one place. Spoiler alert... scroll down further for mixed news about AI's impact on music, giraffes and dark matter.
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On with the show, here are June's highlights (with images generated by AI) ...
Top Stories
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OpenAI’s Next Act – GPT-5 is coming
 - Adweek reports CEO Sam Altman confirmed their new model will launch in summer 2025 (pending safety tests), touting “materially better” performance. He also discussed potential ChatGPT ads and stressed not altering model output for sponsors.
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Midjourney adds video generation
 - Midjourney Blog (David Holz), June 18, 2025. Creative platform Midjourney rolled out its first AI “image-to-video” model, letting users animate their generated images with automatic or manual motion prompts, producing short custom videos. We've tried it out and... it's amazing! You can see what others are creating here.
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Meta’s $14B AI bet
 - Meta is investing $14 billion for a 49% stake in Scale AI. WinBuzzer reveals Mark Zuckerberg created a new “Superintelligence” lab led by Scale’s Alexandr Wang to counter Meta’s talent exodus and speed AI efforts. The bold partnership, amid controversy over Scale’s military ties, gives Meta a critical data pipeline to compete with OpenAI and others.
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AI Adoption in Business & Education
- Goldman Sachs’ AI assistant – Reuters (Saeed Azhar & Pritam Biswas), June 23, 2025. Banking giant Goldman Sachs launched a firm-wide generative AI assistant for employees after piloting it with 10,000 staff, joining peers like Citi and Morgan Stanley in deploying AI bots for research, summarizing and other tasks. Read more
- AI in the classroom – Reuters (Paul Sandle), June 26, 2025. London-based education company Pearson announced a multi-year partnership with Google Cloud to build personalized AI learning tools for primary and secondary students, aiming to tailor lessons and help teachers track progress. Read more
- Startups sell “AI employees” – TechCrunch (Connie Loizos), June 1, 2025. A trend has emerged of enterprise AI startups giving their tools human names and personas and marketing them as “AI co-workers.” This approach aims to reassure managers and speed adoption – but blurs the line between software and staff. Read more
- Workplace AI usage doubles – Gallup (Ryan Pendell), June 16, 2025. A new Gallup survey finds 40% of U.S. employees now use AI at least a few times a year, nearly twice the rate two years ago, with daily use growing from 4% to 8%. Read more
AI Governance & Policy
- Tech lobby vs. EU AI Act – Reuters (Supantha Mukherjee), June 25, 2025. The CCIA Europe industry group (members: Google, Meta, Apple, etc.) publicly urged the EU to delay its AI Act’s next phase (due August), citing missing guidance. They warned that rolling out rules for general AI models without standards “risks stalling innovation,” echoing concerns also raised by Sweden. Read more
- US bans “adversary AI” – Reuters (Stephen Nellis), June 25, 2025. A bipartisan group in Congress introduced the “No Adversarial AI Act,” which would bar U.S. federal agencies from using AI models from China (e.g. DeepSeek) and other foreign “adversaries.” The move follows U.S. officials’ allegations that Chinese AI firms aid Beijing’s military, and ongoing discussions of banning such AI on government devices. Read more
- White House boosting AI – Reuters (Valerie Volcovici & Jarrett Renshaw), June 27, 2025. U.S. President Donald Trump is preparing a series of executive orders to accelerate AI development, focusing on infrastructure: easing power grid connections and offering federal land for new data centers to meet AI’s massive electricity needs. Read more
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- In other news
- Europe’s AI contender – A French startup is taking on OpenAI. TechCrunch details Mistral AI’s release of Magistral reasoning models. The 24B-parameter Magistral Small (open-sourced on HuggingFace) and a larger hosted model tackle step-by-step problem solving in math, coding and logic. Read more
- AI band tricks Spotify – Ars Technica (Ryan Whitwam), June 30, 2025. An anonymous “band” called The Velvet Sundown released two albums generated entirely by AI, yet amassed over 500,000 unwitting listeners on Spotify in weeks. The incident raised fresh debate over disclosure, as users grooved to AI-composed “slop” believing it human-made. Read more
- DeepMind decodes genome “dark matter” – Nature News, June 25, 2025. Google DeepMind unveiled AlphaGenome, an AI model that can analyze up to 1 million DNA base pairs to predict functions of the 98% of human DNA that doesn’t code for proteins. The tool aims to illuminate the genome’s “dark matter,” potentially linking non-coding mutations to diseases. Read more
- Palantir’s nuclear AI – Reuters, June 26, 2025. Big data firm Palantir is partnering with nuclear engineering companies to develop AI-powered software for building nuclear power plants. The project will apply AI to design optimization, construction scheduling and safety monitoring in nuclear construction – a novel use of AI to reduce costs and risks in next-gen energy infrastructure. Read more
Good news
- AI for the FDA – IBM News (Press Release), June 2, 2025. IBM and Roche launched Elsa, a generative AI assistant to help FDA scientists and inspectors work more efficiently. In a pilot, Elsa sped up reviewing clinical protocols and spotting safety issues. Now rolled out agency-wide ahead of schedule, it’s poised to accelerate drug approvals and food safety checks for public benefit. Read more
- Saving the giraffes – Microsoft On the Issues (Juan Lavista Ferres), June 18, 2025. Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab and conservationists built GIRAFFE, an open-source computer vision tool to track Tanzania’s endangered giraffes by their spot patterns. The system identifies individual giraffes with over 90% accuracy, vastly speeding up wildlife surveys and helping rangers target anti-poaching efforts. Read more
- Accessible online shopping – Vision Monday (Staff), May 20, 2025. The National Federation of the Blind announced a partnership with startup Innosearch AI to make e-commerce more accessible for blind users. The collaboration will improve the AI-powered shopping platform with feedback from the blind community, add features like streamlined screen-reader support, and even allow rounding up purchases as donations to the NFB. Read more
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– The Fambirai Team
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