Investing.com - SoftBank Corp (TYO:9434) the telecommunications arm of SoftBank Group, has announced its entry into the rapidly growing field of ChatGPT technology, sparking a surge in shares for several AI-related Japanese firms on Thursday.
In March, SoftBank Corp. established a new division and assembled a team of approximately 1,000 individuals to develop a Japanese-language version of OpenAI Inc.'s artificial intelligence chat system. CEO Junichi Miyakawa shared this information at an earnings briefing on Wednesday but refrained from discussing specific objectives or updates about the project's progress.
Masayoshi Son, billionaire founder and long-time advocate for AI as a transformative force in technology usage, recently gathered engineers to discuss ChatGPT's potential applications; however, no further details were provided by Miyakawa. Following this announcement from SoftBank Corp., local software companies such as Appier Group Inc. and ExaWizards Inc. experienced stock increases exceeding 2% during early trading hours in Tokyo.
Miyakawa expressed great enthusiasm for ChatGPT technology: "We are dead positive on ChatGPT," he said during his presentation. "Most of our meetings these days touch on topics related to Chat GPT." With their entrance into this competitive arena, SoftBank joins numerous US and Chinese corporations seeking to create innovative conversational bots.
As Japan's third-largest mobile operator with involvement across various sectors – including payments processing systems Yahoo Japan Corp.'s search engine services and messaging app Line Corp (NYSE:LN).—SoftBank’s telecom branch is well-positioned to contribute significantly to the burgeoning world of AI-driven communication platforms.