Artificial Intelligence

A picturesque vacation getaway in the western Japanese city of Kobe has been named the site of a planned smart city as the pandemic stirs interest in country living.

Sony Corp. presented Thursday the world’s first image sensors with built-in artificial intelligence, promising to make data-gathering tasks much faster and more secure.

Sony will make listed subsidiary Sony Financial Holdings a wholly owned unit for 400 billion yen ($3.73 billion) as it follows global tech giants Alibaba Group Holding and Apple in turning to finance as a stable profit generator that performs even during crises like the current pandemic, Sony announced Tuesday.

Japan took another step toward building technology-enabled "super cities," with legislation set to pass that will help advance local plans by lowering regulatory hurdles.

Sony looks to enhance next-generation robots from avatarin, a startup launched by Japanese carrier ANA Holdings, as interest grows in remote-control machines that can take the place of humans amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

China's Inspur, the world's third-largest maker of servers for managing data, has gained a foothold in Japan, bringing fresh competition to local players Fujitsu and NEC in a $5 billion market.

Stuck at home with no place to go as the new coronavirus lingers, many people remain glued to streaming services for a way to while away the time. The perfect window for mainstream anime and manga to pick up their game and pump out more hits, one would think.

Japan's private education providers are scrambling to go online as a prolonged state of emergency is set to paralyze brick and mortar classrooms.

A drone will soon be flying through the shelves of a city library here, but it won't be disturbing the concentration of patrons or interfering with the daily operation.

Service robots are finally emerging from the shadows around the world as the pandemic drives demand for avoiding the coronavirus and its carriers.