ANA Holdings, avatarin, and SoftBank Corp. Partner
to Develop Industry-specific Multimodal AI Agents

SoftBank Corp.’s investment in avatarin will drive collaboration to develop AI-powered customer service solutions

 

 

TOKYO, Japan, July 18 2024 –ANA Holdings Inc. (“ANA Holdings”), avatarin Inc. (“avatarin”) and SoftBank Corp. (“SoftBank”) announced a new partnership to create industry-specific customer service solutions using AI, 5G, and robotics technologies. This initiative aims to empower the customer service industry with new capabilities to increase customer engagement amidst growing human resource challenges.

 

SoftBank recently made a strategic investment in avatarin to accelerate the development of its new customer service solutions. avatarin and SoftBank will focus on developing and advancing multimodal AI agents to increase customer engagement at airports and other public facilities by aggregating and analyzing professional human skills data.

 

avatarin, a Tokyo-based AI and robotics spin-out of ANA Holdings, aims to create a world in which professional human skills can be shared across the globe through the integration of AI, robotics, and real-time communication technologies. Through the development and deployment of its core technology, avatar core^®️, avatarin envisions a future where humanity can assist one another anytime, anywhere in the world. avatar core^®️ provides a tangible solution to help address Japan’s human resource challenges while simultaneously aggregating multimodal professional human skills data to advance multimodal AI models and agents. avatarin has already begun the deployment of its communication AI avatar robot newme^®️ to connect professional skills to where they are needed, when they are needed.

 

SoftBank and avatarin will use the aggregated datasets collected by avatar core^®️ and newme^®️ to create industry-specific multimodal AI agents for various mobile devices, including robots and smartphones. This will enable more advanced multi-lingual support for tourists visiting Japan and expand the capabilities of multiple smartphone services. SoftBank will consider ways to support this initiative, such as by providing access to its large-scale language models, computing infrastructure, and annotation support services like TASUKI Annotation. Furthermore, SoftBank’s 5G and 4G/LTE communication networks will be leveraged to address the data bandwidth needs during deployment.

 

Through this partnership, avatarin, and SoftBank will enhance customer experiences by collecting and analyzing Japanese hospitality data to advance the EQ (emotional quotient) of multimodal AI agents. This will open the door to a new generation of AI agents that are more adept at addressing the diverse needs of various customers segments and industries.

 

 

・	SoftBank, the SoftBank name and logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of SoftBank Group Corp. in Japan and other countries.
・	Other company, product and service names in this press release are registered trademarks or trademarks of the respective companies.

 

 

 

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ANA Holdings, avatarin, and SoftBank Corp. Partner to Develop Industry-specific Multimodal AI Agents

 

 

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