AI News

Hakuhodo DY Holdings announced on June 29 that it had established a new company, “Ads for Humanity,” in April to exclude AI and bots and deliver advertisements exclusively to humans, and had begun selling a new advertising product, “Human-Verified Ad,” through the new company. It leverages “World ID,” a human-verification technology co-invented by Sam Altman and others. “World ID” is an ID that enables users to prove that they are “a real human being” with

An initiative to use AI to recreate the judgments and thinking of top management is spreading among major companies in Japan. Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group introduced an “AI CEO” modeled after its group CEO in August 2025. Kirin Holdings incorporated “AI executives CoreMate,” featuring 12 AI personas, into its management strategy meetings and expanded the initiative to group companies in April 2026. NTT Docomo Business is one such company. At “Interop To

Among the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s content-industry subsidy program “IP360,” “Support for Expanding Distribution Platforms” (Menu 5), which supports the overseas distribution infrastructure for Japanese-origin content, is the largest of all nine IP360 menus, offering up to ¥3 billion per company (at a 50% subsidy rate). According to the selection results announced on June 26, 15 of 42 applications were selected (an application-to-selection

Shueisha issued a statement through its official X account on June 29 concerning the issue of the “Newly Illustrated Meta Knight Card,” a giveaway distributed by bookstores from July 1 at the summer comic fair “Natsukomi 2026,” having been listed at high prices on flea-market apps before distribution began. The statement reported that it had “confirmed” listings on flea-market apps. It explained, among other things, that the signature on the card was “prin

“Why can you buy books on the internet but not real estate?” “Why does the fellow at the real estate agency hurriedly send a fax when you rent an apartment?” For most people, real estate—the thing that corresponds to “housing”—should be familiar, yet somehow it is full of things they do not understand. Things that are common sense in other industries are absurd in the real estate industry. Experts clearly unravel these real estate “mysteries” and explore t

Kosei Pharmaceutical (Kobe City), which sells the nutritional supplements “Nobilin” and “Nobilin C,” had posted images of social media posts commissioned from third parties on its own website and elsewhere without clearly stating that they were advertisements. The Consumer Affairs Agency and the Fair Trade Commission determined that this constituted a violation of the Stealth Marketing Guidelines and, on June 29, issued an order for measures against the co

The ruling came in the case “Chattary v. United States” and was issued by a 6–3 vote. Justice Elena Kagan wrote the opinion, which five justices joined. The opinion stated that users have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in the location information on their own smartphones and concluded that law enforcement’s acquisition of that information constitutes a “search” under the Fourth Amendment. A “geofence warrant” is a warrant that directs an IT company

U.S.-based OpenAI posted a teaser video on the company’s official developer X account, “OpenAI Developers,” on June 29 (local time), for what appears to be a new product related to its AI coding assistance tool, “Codex.” The video displays the message, “Your favorite Codex shortcuts are getting an upgrade,” along with the date “July 15.” An announcement of some kind appears to be planned for that day. Semi-transparent keys arranged in a grid (Source: OpenA

Aflac Life Insurance announced on June 30 that systems including the customer-exclusive website “Aflac Yorisounet” had been accessed without authorization by a third party, resulting in the leak of some information, including customers’ personal information. Approximately 4.38 million people were affected. As of the present, the company said no improper use of the leaked information or similar misuse had been identified. Timeline from the occurrence of una

Mercari lifted its ban on listings of “Chiikawa” toys that McDonald’s had offered as giveaways with Happy Sets from May 15 to June 11, at noon on June 30. As an anti-resale measure, Mercari had prohibited listings for roughly one and a half months from the May 15 launch, but decided to lift the ban after comprehensively considering factors such as the end of the sales period at McDonald’s and market trends. The listing ban has been lifted, and listings hav

Nippon Television Network announced on June 30 that it would end its catch-up streaming service “Nippon TV Free! (TADA)” at the end of September. The service will be consolidated into the commercial broadcasters’ official streaming service, “TVer.” The discontinuation of the service is also announced on the “Nippon TV Free! (TADA)” website. Video streaming will end as of 6 p.m. on September 30. At the same time, related services, including support for the

Effective price increases are occurring one after another for AI services such as “GitHub Copilot” and “Claude.” The true cost of generative AI, previously hidden in subscription fees, has finally begun to appear on corporate invoices. Fixed monthly fees were like time bombs that would eventually spike once fully utilized. Now multiple companies are beginning to measure token costs on the same footing as labor costs. This is not a question of technology, b

Accelerating the Evolution of Urban Intelligent Computing Centers in Eastern China Toward E-AIDC Recently, Damo Technology and Shanghai Pudong Environmental Protection Energy Development Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Pudong Environmental Protection Energy”) officially signed a strategic cooperation agreement. The two parties will make in-depth deployments across four key areas: data center energy-efficiency optimization and intelligent management

(Photo=Baidu) Chinese Baidu unveiled an automated research system for AI development in which AI independently determines research directions and repeats experiments. Following its breakthrough of existing AI training benchmark records, the company demonstrated technological progress toward recursive self-improvement (RSI), while increasing the inference speed of its own model under development by more than sixfold in certain environments. Baidu announced

U.S.-based Open Standard announced on June 30 (local time) a new stablecoin, “Open USD,” for companies to transfer funds across borders. More than 140 companies from the payments, finance, IT, and crypto asset sectors participated, including U.S.-based Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, Coinbase, and Google. From Japan, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Mizuho Financial Group, Rakuten Group, PayPay, and others also joined. Source: From the press release;

The trend of companies entrusting system development itself to AI is spreading. AI agents handle everything from requirements definition to code generation, while people focus on judgment. Examples of development speeds increasing severalfold through such “AI-driven development” are no longer rare. ASKUL is one such company. However, the gateway to full-scale adoption was not a proactive investment. It was a ransomware attack that brought the entire busine

PC peripheral manufacturer Buffalo (Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo) announced that it would continue selling its Blu-ray Disc drives for a while because it had been able to “procure additional materials,” after having previously announced that sales of the drives would end in July. The company said that sales will be limited to remaining stock once production using the additional materials ends, and that there is no change in its plans to discontinue sales in the med

Marubeni announced on July 1 that it had made Iosis, a company engaged in the purchase and sale of used smartphones, PCs, and other devices, a wholly owned subsidiary. As new devices become more expensive due to soaring semiconductor memory prices, Marubeni expects the affordable secondhand market to grow. Iosis also changed its leadership at the same time: founder Naoki Nakamoto stepped down, and Takajun Kure was newly appointed president and representati

A system failure occurred at around 11:25 a.m. on July 1 in “MARS” (Marusu), the ticket sales system used by six JR Group companies, including JR East, JR West, and JR Central, making it difficult to make reserved-seat reservations and use related services at ticket machines at stations nationwide. The system was reportedly fully restored by 1:35 p.m. The cause of the failure is under investigation. JR East’s “Mobile Suica” also experienced a failure on th

The private research firm Tokyo Shoko Research announced a ranking of executive compensation among listed companies, based on financial results for the fiscal year ending March 2026. The top three were executives from SoftBank Group, Kioxia Holdings, and Sony Group, with the highest amount coming to approximately ¥6.1 billion. Of the 1,995 companies surveyed, 387 had executives who received compensation of at least ¥100 million, and the number of executive