Following the government's report on AI utilization, generative AI is proving highly effective for individual tasks such as document creation at Japanese companies, while its use for business process automation and product enhancement remains low. The gap between policy design and practical implementation has been highlighted, and attention is turning to future developments.
The government's 6th Advanced AI Utilization Advisory Board was held on 29 September 2026, where a report presented objective data on the results achieved and areas of stagnation in the use of generative AI. It confirmed that adoption is advancing in individual desktop tasks such as document summarization and information retrieval.
While Japanese companies have high adoption rates for tasks such as document creation and translation, progress in automating business processes and enhancing products and services remains limited to approximately 27.9% and 18.5%, respectively. The report noted that Japan is lagging in preparing data and putting autonomous AI agents into full-scale operation. A comparative survey by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications also highlighted that Japanese companies make substantially less use of databases than their US counterparts.
A case study of a construction company showed that when data such as estimates, daily reports and ledgers are fragmented, AI's role is limited to document support. Organizing the data is a prerequisite for using functions that provide early warnings of gaps between projected and actual costs and identify omissions by comparing projects with similar past construction work.