Meetup Event Report: AI Fes. 2025

─ In order to share knowledge and resources, could you also explain why you chose the poster session format?

Shimada: There's a culture of presenting at conferences and publishing papers across CyberAgent, especially in the AI Division. I've been to many AI conferences myself and have always been struck by the dynamic discussions and spontaneous collaborations that happen during poster sessions. What really solidified the idea was our internal "AI Lab Showcase" in the summer of 2024. Seeing so many people from different divisions gather and engage with the researchers' posters was quite inspiring.
A traditional conference format has its merits, but given the fast-paced evolution of generative AI, we needed a format that would maximize interaction. That's why we chose a poster session. And by calling it a "festival," we wanted to add an element of excitement—to create a casual environment where engineers and creators could freely exchange ideas and build lasting connections.

When I pitched the idea to management, the feedback was very positive. They saw it as a great solution that would not only foster knowledge sharing but also create a custom that people finalize their work for presentation, inspiring one another. They also advised us to start with a manageable scale and noted that many people were eager for such a platform, making it a potentially newsworthy event.

Through further discussions, we decided to focus on strengthening the horizontal connections and community among those involved in AI within the company.

AI Division, AI Lab Agent Development:Our team exhibited the foundation of our conversational AI service and image recognition technologies. The feedback and opinions we received through the demos strongly reaffirmed our motivation to work towards swift real-world implementation.

■ Getting Started with GenAI and Inference on the Cycloud ML Platform

Group IT Promotion Division, CIU: The Cycloud ML Platform is our end-to-end machine learning infrastructure, available to all employees. We showcased its features, use cases, and cost structure, and also demonstrated our "GenAI Tool Deployment Service," which lets anyone deploy AI tools with just a few clicks. The conversations we had confirmed the rising interest in AI across all roles and departments. Meeting users face-to-face, many of whom we'd only known by online chat, gave us invaluable feedback and helped us build relationships for future collaborations.

■ SGE AI Strategy Division

Our team showcased several initiatives that support game development and operations. As development costs rise and features grow more complex each year, we presented our medium to long-term strategy for applying AI to continue delivering superior player experiences.

■ [AI x Economics] Pricing and Diversity 

AI Division, AI Economics Company: We shared case studies on our dynamic pricing work in the retail and e-commerce sectors. We had a great discussion with folks from the Media Division who could see immediate applications for the solution. It was also a rare opportunity to talk technology directly with the management team, including Executive Vice President Yasuo Okamoto, who was one of many executives who stopped by.

■ Use GenAI Safely and Securely: An Introduction to our Guidelines and the "Similarity Check Support Bot" for Everyone

AI Operations Office: Our "Similarity Check Support Bot" helps users check for similarities with external images. It's designed to catch things that are hard for a human to spot or when the user is simply unaware of a similar existing work.
We also run a company-wide educational campaign with a simple message: As genAI tools become more common, everyone has the potential to become a creator. This also brings the risk of unintentional copyright infringement. We urge all employees to use the Similarity Check Support Bot to help avoid these issues, drawing on lessons from actual legal cases.
Presenting at AI Fes. made it clear that we need more education on copyright in general, not just for generative AI. There's a common misconception that "if I made it myself, it can't be infringement." This highlighted the need to increase awareness of our bot across the entire organization, regardless of role.

■ User Test Results from an AI-Powered Writing Assistant in Ameba Blog

AmebaLIFE Division: For AI Fes., we wanted to find the best UI for integrating generative AI into our service. We built a prototype directly into Ameba Blog and had real bloggers test it out. Their feedback, which we displayed on our poster, revealed usage patterns and UI considerations that we, as developers, would never have discovered on our own.
Feedback from attendees showed a strong interest in on-device, client-side generative AI, especially from front-end engineers. It was very useful to share our findings and challenges with other developers. We also heard from employee-bloggers that title generation is a major pain point for them, with many saying they would use the feature as soon as it's released.

■  Business Applications from the Natural Language Processing (NLP)

AI Lab.: The NLP team at AI Lab focuses on both academic research and industrial applications. At our booth, we introduced our team members, their specialties, and our key achievements over the past year.

We received a ton of inquiries from different business divisions about their NLP-related challenges. Several have already led to follow-up meetings and are developing into concrete projects. As excitement around AI grows, we're eager to contribute by bringing the latest NLP technology to every corner of the business.

AI Fes. was a fantastic opportunity for us to share our work beyond our immediate division. We look forward to building on these new connections and fostering more collaborations in the future.

■ Utilization of Audio Data by the AI Lab Audio Team 

AI Lab Audio Nexus: This presentation showcased research on isolating human voices from audio sources heavily mixed with BGM or environmental sounds. The technology can also produce studio-quality voice recordings even from low-quality audio captured with poor microphones or in noisy environments. The live demo was a great success, with attendees expressing amazement at the results.

■ AI POS: AI x UX in Practice for our B2B Retail Product

AI POS Company: We shared a demo of our product, which launched in November. Members of the sales division immediately saw its potential to solve problems for their clients. We also had a great technical discussion with researchers from the AI Lab, which is expected to kick off several new collaborations.

■ The Past and Future of our Sports Video Tech

 WINTICKET Sports Video Tech Division: We had a fantastic discussion about the new sports viewing experience we're developing for WINTICKET. Attendees were really engaged and interested in our vision.