Rakuten wesentlich besser als Rocket
Rakuten Group, which operates Japan’s leading shopping mall, owns around 40 subsidiaries, including Rakuten Card, a Japanese credit card company, as well as banks, travel agencies, telecoms companies, and media outlets. Utilizing Coocon’s data, Rakuten Group launched the “Rakuten Household Account Book” last month, allowing its 100 million members in Japan to gain a comprehensive view of their personal assets at a glance.
Rakuten Group’s household account book service automatically categorizes income, such as salaries and bonuses deposited into bank accounts, along with expenditures, including credit card transactions, telecommunication bills, gas bills, and water fees. This feature enables users to obtain a comprehensive overview of their household’s earnings and expenses, facilitating effective asset management.
https://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/...?idxno=217686#google_vignette
11 hours ago
OpenAI has officially landed in Japan. A strategic AI partner of Rakuten from fall 2023, the company behind ChatGPT has set up shop in Tokyo – their first office in Asia.
Rakuten and OpenAI marked the occasion by hosting an event at Rakuten Crimson House, which kicked off with a lecture from OpenAI Solutions Engineer Evan Weiss for Rakuten’s e-commerce and travel consultants. During the talk, Weiss shared some of the many innovative ways that AI tools could supercharge workflows and allow them to further empower merchants and accommodation providers on Rakuten’s market-leading e-commerce and travel platforms.
The lecture was followed by an insightful conversation between OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap and Rakuten Group Chief AI & Data Officer Ting Cai, who discussed the new office opening, answered questions about how Rakuten and OpenAI can do even more to support clients and partners, and even speculated on future AI trends and technologies.
Next stop: Tokyo
“Japan has long been a fascination for us,” Lightcap told the Rakuten audience. “It’s a market that has a rich history of adopting new technology, of innovating on critical technology and critical manufacturing.”
Lightcap noted the incredible demand the company has seen from the Japanese market. “We have two million people here using ChatGPT every week, which is astounding,” he revealed. “We wanted to be really close to where we felt we had an opportunity to work very closely with potential customers, with users, with developers.”
OpenAI’s expansion is a continuation of its astonishing growth. Rakuten’s Cai noted that the company had just a few hundred employees as the partnership kicked off. Just a few months later, that number is over a thousand.
OpenAI is more than just research
Lightcap credits OpenAI’s rapid growth to its unique combination of research and engineering.
“Everyone thinks of OpenAI as a research organization. We are a research organization, but we’re a research and engineering organization. We learned early on the value of really, really strong engineering.”
The company’s engineering expertise has allowed them to build systems that can keep up with the sheer scale and complexity of the models they research.
One major turning point for the company was its decision to focus not on small models for specific tasks, but a single, massive model to do everything.
“We started the company early on with a very core mission of being able to build AGI (artificial general intelligence) and being able to ensure that the benefits of AGI were very broadly distributed, and that the technology was built and deployed very safely.”
A generally intelligent system should be capable of learning, allowing it to take on new tasks without prior knowledge.
“If you get to that point, then there’s kind of no reason to have these hyper-specialized small models,” Lightcap reasoned. “Using a thousand models that are each for a specific task is somewhat contrary to this idea of a generally intelligent model that can learn how to do many tasks.”
Future ChatGPT will handle tasks end to end
Lightcap made clear that OpenAI was not about to sit back and rest on its already extraordinary laurels.
“Even today, we still actually consider the technology to be in its infancy,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve really seen fully what this technology is capable of, and I think the rate at which it improves will surprise us.”
How could ChatGPT improve even further?
“Ultimately, the models have to be able to go off and solve more complex tasks,” he continued. “If you think about it, today you can use ChatGPT, for example, to solve fairly basic things. It can help you summarize text, it can help with translation, it can help you write something… but those are very narrow tasks and they only represent small percentages of what comprises a total workflow.”
Lightcap wants to see ChatGPT evolve into something that can handle tasks from end to end.
“The work that we do every day is actually much more complex,” he noted. “So how do you improve the model’s ability to be assistive across that entire workflow and to start helping you think through how to integrate each of those tasks to come up with new knowledge, new ideas, and solve complex problems?”
Empowering clients and partners with novel use cases
ChatGPT and other AI tools are already being utilized in innovative ways, including within Rakuten. Rakuten has been proactively pursuing an initiative called AI-nization, through which AI tools are not only being adopted internally, but used to empower partners, such as the merchants of Rakuten Ichiba and hotels, traditional Japanese inns and other accommodation facilities on Rakuten Travel.
“BOTH RAKUTEN AND OPEN AI, WE SHARE THE MISSION OF BRINGING VALUE TO SOCIETY. IN ORDER FOR MILLIONS OF PEOPLE TO BENEFIT FROM THE LATEST MODELS, IT TAKES ENGINEERING, BUT ALSO MORE IMPORTANTLY, TOOLS.”
TING CAI, CHIEF AI & DATA OFFICER OF RAKUTEN GROUP
“There’s this diversity of applications from personal consumer use cases all the way through to very real business use cases,” Lightcap added. “I think one that I really love is how Rakuten has thought a lot about building tools for merchants. There’s something very special about aligning the capabilities that the technology has to enable people, to make them more productive, make them more efficient.”
Rakuten’s work empowering merchants harmonizes well with OpenAI’s mission to use AI tools to empower society, Lightcap noted.
“Merchants have a million things to do every day. Running a business is really hard, but it’s really important that merchants exist. They’re critical to the fabric of our society,” he stressed.
“So how do you marry tools and the capabilities that AI brings to the needs that merchants have, when it comes to running a business, and operating a business at growing scale? We think that’s a tremendous opportunity and actually is one of my favorite use cases.”
“YOU DON’T HAVE TO KNOW HOW TO WRITE A LINE OF CODE, BUT YOU BASICALLY HAVE A 24-HOUR ASSISTANT THAT YOU CAN ACCESS VIRTUALLY FOR FREE WHO CAN WRITE YOU AS MUCH CODE AS YOU CAN DREAM UP, AND THAT’S ONLY GOING TO GET BETTER, AND IT’S GOING TO GET BETTER IN A WAY THAT’S ACCESSIBLE.”
BRAD LIGHTCAP, COO OF OPENAI
With AI tools available to the entire world, Lightcap is eager to see how people adapt.
“There’s going to be this tremendously large, overarching theme of growth and opportunity. It will change fundamentally how we do work and how we grow companies and build products. I think we’ll adapt pretty well, and overall I’m very positive and optimistic about the future.”
Taking the AI plunge
Rakuten’s Chief AI & Data Officer Cai has a clear vision for how Rakuten wants to employ AI tech going forward. “At Rakuten, we believe we should augment human creativity with the power of AI – humans and AI working together.”
“We want to think big, and we also want to stay very concrete. Especially for Rakuten, we are here to deliver concrete value to our business partners and our customers,” he continued. “Rakuten also very much values entrepreneurship and innovation, and we want to create value for society. In that regard, I feel like OpenAI and Rakuten have a lot of things in common.”
OpenAI has also been prolific with its partnerships, maintaining mutually beneficial relationships to empower their partners while improving their own tools. “We really are a company that can bring people into the process of developing the technology, into the process of distributing its benefits,” Lightcap remarked.
Lightcap’s advice for companies looking to take the AI plunge?
“Don’t start necessarily trying to solve every problem in your business with AI. Start to solve a few that really matter and be very focused in how you do that,” Lightcap said. “I think one of the most important things that any company can do is just giving their people access to the best product, and starting to just let them experiment and figure out where it can add value.”
https://rakuten.today/blog/rakuten-openai-whats-next-in-genai.html
- Automated AI-based IoT space management solution designed to enhance operational efficiency and maximize profits for unmanned businesses
- Rakuten NEO official site: https://rakuten-neo.com/en
Tokyo, July 11, 2024 - Rakuten Symphony today announced the full-scale commercial launch of “Rakuten NEO,” an advanced AI-based IoT (Artificial Intelligence + Internet of Things) solution for automating space management, in Japan.
Designed to enhance the operational efficiency of unmanned businesses in markets seeking solutions for labor shortages, Rakuten NEO is an AI-based IoT solution equipped with sophisticated machine learning algorithms and sensor technology. This solution supports the rapid growth of fully unmanned businesses as well as the transition of existing staffed businesses to unmanned operations. It enhances space management efficiency and reduces operational costs, maximizing business profits as a result.
Rakuten NEO provides remote support for premises access control, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), humidity management and other operational system controls, in addition to inventory inspections. It quickly detects and responds to unauthorized access, water leaks and other emergencies. This allows for management of multiple spaces simultaneously in real-time with minimal staff presence. The solution is offered on a SaaS (Software as a Service) model and enables customers to select the functions they need for their businesses, making cost reductions and efficient operations more achievable.
Rakuten NEO is provided in partnership with Rakuten Symphony and South Korean startup Alicorn. Based on the Alicorn Space AI (ASA) service launched by Alicorn in 2020, Rakuten NEO represents a significant advancement in unmanned office management. By integrating ASA into their own co-working office service, Alicorn has successfully enabled a single operator to manage 12 offices over 600 kilometers apart. Today, more than 10 major South Korean companies, including GS Holdings Corp. and Shinhan Securities Co., Ltd., have adopted this solution to leverage its unmanned automation capabilities, resulting in up to an 80% reduction in labor costs and significantly enhanced operational efficiency for GS Holdings.
Building on this success, Rakuten Symphony is rolling out Rakuten NEO, initially targeting the Japanese market and subsequently expanding globally. This strategic launch aims to capture the AI-based IoT market for fully unmanned business operations, offering cutting-edge automation and operational efficiency enhancements.
In Japan, the unmanned storage solutions provider Marine Box has already successfully implemented Rakuten NEO to significantly enhance its operational efficiency. The company seamlessly manages access control, remotely controls temperature and humidity for stored items, and receives real-time alerts for leaks and fires through Rakuten NEO. This approach allows Marine Box to reduce personnel costs while simultaneously improving the quality of its storage services.
Rakuten NEO is not only designed for unmanned storage services but also extends its innovative capabilities to various sectors, including offices, showrooms, accommodations, golf driving ranges, gyms and coin laundries. This versatile solution offers cost-effective and efficient management across a wide range of unmanned business operations
Ryan Son, President of Rakuten Symphony’s Internet Services Business Unit, commented, “The retail industry in Japan is currently facing significant labor shortages. Through Rakuten NEO, we aim to mitigate the losses that companies are experiencing due to this workforce challenge and provide socially beneficial services that align with Rakuten's corporate philosophy. We expect Rakuten NEO to alleviate the burdens of hiring, managing staff and controlling costs for business owners.”
Rakuten is committed to contributing to society by creating value through innovation and entrepreneurship. By leveraging Rakuten NEO’s innovative AI-based IoT technology, Rakuten Symphony aims to alleviate labor shortage issues and enable businesses to operate even more efficiently.
https://global.rakuten.com/corp/news/press/2024/0711_01.html
https://www.techradar.com/pro/rakuten-drive-review
https://www.rakuten-sec.co.jp/web/company/...pdf/press20240711_02.pdf
15 hours ago
The realm of influencer and creator marketing continues its exponential growth, weaving its influence across diverse industries.
Creator marketing has a profound impact on brand visibility, engagement, authenticity and sales. It allows brands to connect with their target audience in a meaningful and authentic way, leading to long-term benefits and competitive advantage in the market.
Amidst the ever-evolving landscape, Rakuten’s creator marketing platform, Collective Voice, has emerged as an indispensable asset within the Rakuten Rewards business in the U.S. Since its inception in 2008, Collective Voice has been a trailblazer in creator marketing, offering cutting-edge tools, transparent data and unparalleled resources, forging meaningful connections between vetted creators and top brands.
A snapshot of growth metrics reveals the power of Collective Voice’s impact, highlighting success factors beyond traditional KPIs. The platform unveiled invaluable insights through significant relationships between creators and brands.
Beyond the metrics: Measuring the true impact of creator campaigns
In a recent survey, Collective Voice tapped into the feedback and data of its expansive network of creators to gauge the holistic impact of brand campaigns, transcending conventional KPIs.
Among the pivotal revelations, a staggering 72% of creators affirmed that collaborations with brands amplified awareness of new products among their audience.
“BY EMBRACING A STRATEGIC AND HOLISTIC APPROACH TO CREATOR MARKETING, BRANDS CAN BUILD AUTHENTIC RELATIONSHIPS, FOSTER ENGAGEMENT AND MAXIMIZE THE LONGEVITY OF THEIR CAMPAIGNS.”
LINDSAY JERUTIS, GENERAL MANAGER AT COLLECTIVE VOICE
A significant 65% of creators acknowledged seamlessly integrating campaign products into their organic content, sparking a ripple effect termed the “halo effect.”
Noteworthy is the revelation that 47% of creators actively incorporate audience feedback into their content creation process, underscoring a dynamic and interactive approach.
Furthermore, creators unveiled that they prioritize five key factors in branded content creation:
Building brand loyalty
Showcasing creativity
Fostering community engagement
Generating sales and conversions
Eliciting emotional responses
The findings spotlight “building brand loyalty” as the paramount objective for creators in their engagement with branded content.
“The landscape of creator marketing is evolving rapidly, and understanding its true impact is paramount to building authenticity and follower engagement,” said Lindsay Jerutis, General Manager at Collective Voice. “Our research shows that creator contributions have many positive outcomes for brands, from driving discovery to fostering brand advocacy. By embracing a strategic and holistic approach to creator marketing, brands can build authentic relationships, foster engagement and maximize the longevity of their campaigns. Collaborating with credible, trusted creator platforms will provide brands with the tools and resources to navigate creator marketing successfully.”
Elevating the creator marketing narrative: SXSW, Optimism US and Digiday
Collective Voice has taken center stage on multiple prestigious platforms so far in 2024, amplifying both creators and brand partners.
In March, Collective Voice hosted a compelling panel at the prestigious South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, discussing the rise of niche-creators and the lasting impact they can have on brand campaigns. As a result of the immense interest in this topic, the panel was reimagined at Rakuten Optimism US in May, delving into the micro-creators’ ability to create unparalleled campaign experiences.
Subsequently, in collaboration with Digiday, Collective Voice orchestrated a riveting webinar featuring Jerutis, alongside creator Shana Draugelis from The Mom Edit and Cathy Chen, VP of Growth Marketing from luxury department store, Saks Fifth Avenue, offering firsthand insights into their successful collaboration and the evolution of creator marketing.
https://rakuten.today/blog/...-of-creator-and-brand-partnerships.html
Abhängig von Ihrer Region können Sie entweder eine drei Monate lange kostenlose Testversion des Spotify Premium-Abonnements erhalten oder einen Rabatt von bis zu 90 % auf den Dienst nutzen1. Diese Partnerschaft ermöglicht es Rakuten Viber-Benutzern, die Premium-Musik-Abonnement von Spotify zu nutzen und ein werbefreies Hörerlebnis zu genießen. Die Länder, in denen diese Aktion verfügbar ist, umfassen Frankreich, Deutschland, das Vereinigte Königreich, Italien, die Philippinen und Vietnam.
https://www.bing.com/...p;adppc=EDGEDSP&PC=EDGEDSP&showconv=1
By Anshul Bhatt
Chief Product Officer, BU Intelligent Operations Rakuten Symphony
AI-based automation becomes powerful when levels four and five of the network AI autonomy scale are reached (see below for a refresher on autonomy levels).
These levels support network systems controlled by AI-infused network and service management, collecting and logging network statistics, reporting them to managers and fixing problems via instantaneous, automated network parameter or network function adjustments.
Our previous posts explored the six-level path to AI-based autonomous networks, challenges of building those networks and how level-three use cases can impact the network.
According to the automation taxonomy, Level 4 offers AI-assisted automation and Level 5 offers complete intent-aware autonomy. Often, the difference between these levels is the amount of human intervention required.
A fully autonomous network comprises all Level 5 systems, but in reality, MNOs seek to automate the systems that create the biggest pain points. That’s why thinking about the path to network autonomy as a series of use cases is beneficial.
Let’s explore three Level 4 use cases that will have a dramatic impact on an MNO network:
Data-driven auto root cause analysis (RCA) and next best action (NBA)
RCA and NBA are the found data of service assurance. Adding AI makes it possible for these techniques to keep up with new network dynamics like continuous deployment and redeployment of cloud native clusters, including software micro services. As we have discussed in our Zero Touch Telecom newsletter, having an enterprise data model and right data strategy is important to realize this level of autonomy. The AI functionality enables the system to know who is doing what and when, based on continuous monitoring and action orchestration and then to recommend RCA and NBA autonomously.
AI-based trace analytics for CCO algorithms/rApps
Collecting traces of signaling data flows provides a tried-and-true diagnostic data source for common network configuration or interoperability problems. These are issues that reduce coverage, capacity or both. This Level 4 automation capability uses the trace data for autonomous capacity and coverage optimization (CCO) via an algorithm or an rApp for a RAN intelligent controller. We have implemented many use cases where AI assistance was used for some of the most common problems like sleeping cell detection and remediation as well as new areas of innovation around energy management.
AI-based log analytics for observability and policy recommendations
An observability dashboard serves as the window into every event in a Kubernetes cluster. Therefore, organizations must build custom dashboards that offer a view of health, capacity, software changes, audits and insightful analytics into the Kubernetes cluster. With this Level Four tool, data from observability and policy systems are gathered, and suggested changes are presented for action. Once a network engineer makes the changes, this system pushes the changes to the network elements for implementation. This allows MNOs to shift focus from dashboards to insights. We simply cannot have more dashboards for increasingly complex networks. AI-based logs and monitoring is the only sustainable way to manage the increased monitoring-data overload.
Let’s move on to two Level 5 use cases that can provide full autonomy to an MNO network:
LLM-assisted automation scripting for SREs
Site reliability engineers (SREs) must meet service level-agreements (SLAs) and key performance indicators (KPIs) when working to restore a service outage. With a large language model (LLM)-based incident management and restoration system, SREs can create scripts that meet the goal of automating the response to future-like situations in a way that reduces the time it takes to restore the network. With the aid of generative AI, network operations engineers can immediately do the work of coders and play an active role in automating key processes.
AI-based ITSM manager to drive incident management
Using an AI co-pilot assistant to manage network incidents can significantly reduce the mean time it takes to restore the network after an incident. Using AI, operations support engineers or incident managers can streamline ITSM tasks, improve accuracy and accelerate issue resolution. A level five AI-based incident copilot can manage the trouble ticket triaging, reassignments, execution of critical restoration activities, tracking the resolution, summarization and communication related to the incident, root cause analysis review and incident debrief including lessons learnt.
As these use cases demonstrate, reaching Level 4 and Level 5 automation can have a dramatic impact on network operations and service quality.
We are constantly working on new use cases using our AI technology and the experience we have from Rakuten Mobile. The job of network autonomy is never done. But by applying AI automation to problem areas of your network you can make a big difference.
https://symphony.rakuten.com/blog/...-of-an-autonomous-mobile-network
Your summer, booked: Rakuten Kobo expands digital reading offering in Spain with Kobo Plus, the all-you-can-read and listen subscription
Spanish readers can now read more, more often with read and listen subscription options for a low monthly fee
TORONTO – July 4, 2024 – Rakuten Kobo announces the launch of Kobo Plus in Spain. The subscription service offers booklovers unlimited access to over 1.5 million eBooks and over 200,000 audiobooks for a low monthly fee.
“At Kobo, our mission is to make reading lives better. Our Kobo Plus subscription does just that, giving booklovers the freedom to read as much as they want, whenever they want, for a low monthly fee. We are delighted to bring the subscription service to our Spanish readers, so that they can enjoy their favourite stories without boundaries," said Bart Robers, Director, Audiobooks and Global Subscriptions, Rakuten Kobo.
Just in time for summer, Spanish booklovers can now access Kobo Plus via the Kobo Books App for iOS or Android and directly on Kobo eReaders. The Kobo Plus eBook and audiobook collection has something for everyone, from beloved literary classics to bone-chilling thrillers, sweeping romances, and thought-provoking nonfiction, including: The Kobo Plus catalogue is ever-growing, with more titles being added to the collection each month.
The service has three budget-friendly subscription plan offers:
Kobo Plus Read: Unlimited eBooks for 8.99 € per month
Kobo Plus Listen: Unlimited audiobooks for 8.99 € per month
Kobo Plus Read and Listen: Unlimited eBooks and audiobooks for 11.99 € per month
Kobo Plus is an ideal way to explore literary classics, an entire author's catalogue, dive into a new field of interest, or explore local and independent gems. The subscription lets readers sample a few pages from a genre or author they have never read, and move onto another book guilt-free if it's not to their taste. It’s an ideal option for avid book lovers who can tear through several books a month, and for those who prefer to read a few chapters before committing. There’s never been a better time to discover new authors and series on a Kobo eReader or with the free Kobo reading app.
https://www.kobo.com/news/...all-you-can-read-and-listen-subscription