Research and Development
The LY Corporation aims to contribute to the development of information technology society through the promotion of R&D and open innovation including the development of open source software (OSS).
LY Corporation’s R&D
LY Corporation’s mission is to "create an amazing life platform that brings WOW! to our users." "WOW" and "! (astonishing)" symbolize the values that LINE and Yahoo! JAPAN have respectively cherished and cultivated.
Each reflects the aspiration to provide users with experiences and emotions that exceed their imaginations.
The R&D division is dedicated to leveraging data and AI to provide these new experiences. Additionally, the division is committed to actively sharing the results with the broader community through research publications, contributions to open source projects, and the release of datasets.
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Cases in Which Research Resulted in Services
Developing a visual language model for Yahoo! JAPAN Auction to monitor listings that violate terms of use
There are detailed guidelines for listed items to ensure the integrity of the auction platform. To streamline the process of ensuring integrity, Yahoo! JAPAN Auction partially implements automated reviews of its listings. On the other hand, since the items listed are diverse, there was a need for technological innovation. The traditional method of building a model for each individual category to identify rule-violating listings was not scalable and became a challenge. In response, a foundational model is under development to associate images with language (words, sentences, etc.), gradually expanding the scope of automated reviews. Beyond auctions, the application scope is expanding to include other user submissions and review operations. In this way, LY Corporation is strengthening its efforts in both the research and development and the practical application of technologies that form a part of the latest generative AI advancements.
Related Links
- Improving Yahoo! JAPAN Auction Listing Review Efficiency Using In-house Developed Multimodal Foundation Model | LY Corporation Tech Blog (Japanese only)
- Released High-Performance Japanese Multimodal Foundation Model "clip-japanese-base" | LY Corporation Tech Blog (Japanese only)
- Image Processing | LY Corporation R&D
Camera Search
LY Corporation (the “Company”) has implemented a product called Camera Search in multiple services, utilizing proprietary AI models and vector search technology. For example, it is possible to extract vector data representing image features using AI models from images captured by a camera, and then search for similar images by employing vector search technology.
The Camera Search feature enables users to find matching products, celebrities, or images by using a photo they take or an image saved on their smartphone. Users can search for designs or items that are difficult to describe with words, as well as find celebrities whose names are unknown or who resemble the user or people around them.
The Camera Search feature in Yahoo! JAPAN Browser can even identify the model year of automobiles using proprietary AI technology. By utilizing data from Carview!, a service within the LY Corporation Group, the feature's coverage is significantly broadened. In this way, LY Corporation is advancing its evolution through the mutual complementation of research and development with services and business operations.
Related Links
- Research Area | LY Corporation R&D
- How to Use Camera Search | Yahoo! JAPAN Browser Official Blog (Japanese only)
- Yahoo! JAPAN Browser Launches "Car Search" Feature in "Camera Search," Allowing Users to Identify Automobile Models and Prices (Press release | Japanese only)
- Yahoo! JAPAN App Launches Camera Search Feature Enabling Image-Based Search Without Text Input for Similar Products and People (Press release | Japanese only)
Voice guidance in Yahoo! JAPAN Maps and Car Navigation
LY Corporation has been advancing research and development on natural Japanese speech synthesis, and is now working on miniaturizing it to a level that can operate on-device (such as on smartphones).
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Automated text-to-speech for audiobooks
Research and development in natural Japanese speech synthesis is also applied to the creation of audiobooks.
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Released “Tappy,” a UX tool that visualizes tap accuracy
In January 2024, the Company released Tappy, a tool that creates a model to estimate the distribution of tap coordinates when users select UI elements such as a publish button or link. When the users enter a link, the tool calculates the probability of successfully tapping those buttons or links. Tappy automatically detects tappable UI elements on smartphone webpages and estimates the tap accuracy based on the size of these elements. Different device models have different values of scale and pixel resolution (pixels per inch, PPI), and the size of physical UI element that is actually seen and tapped varies. These differences are also automatically calculated to determine the percentage of successful taps. Tappy is used to improve the services provided by the Company and is also open to the public. Creators can benefit from this tool when they make analyses based on quantitative figures and make comparative discussions.
Related Links
- Tappy ❘ Yahoo! JAPAN (Japanese only)
- Rethinking the Dual Gaussian Distribution Model for Predicting Touch Accuracy in On-screen-start Pointing Tasks | ACM（External website）
- Predicting Touch Accuracy for Rectangular Targets by Using One-Dimensional Task Results| ACM（External website）
- A Model That Calculates the Tap Accuracy on Smartphones—Usability Estimation in UI Designs | Yahoo! JAPAN Tech Blog (Japanese only)
- Released “Tappy,” a Tool That Visualizes Tap Accuracy | LY Corporation Design(Japanese only)
Scientific validation of character and line spacing to enhance readability of text content and application to Yahoo! JAPAN News
The selection of font properties is largely dependent on the designer's sensibilities, and since the fonts provided by operating systems and browsers are developed based on the English language, there was room for optimization of Japanese fonts. By conducting a large-scale experiment and statistically analyzing the data obtained, an attempt was made to identify Japanese font properties that many would find easy to read.
In a large-scale preliminary experiment using crowdsourcing, 6,480 data samples collected from 1,080 participants were statistically analyzed together with a university laboratory specializing in interaction, to determine how the combination of the size of characters and line spacing affects the way people perceive the text. As a result, combinations with good visual balance and low psychological load were identified.
Using this analysis results, LY Corporation Research conducted a demonstration experiment with Yahoo! JAPAN News and analyzed the impact of readability on service KPIs. The experiment confirmed that visually balanced characters and line spacing with low psychological load contribute to service KPIs, such as increasing time spent on the website and page views per visit, as well as significantly increasing page views. These factors led to the application of these results to Yahoo! JAPAN News, and this is an example of how the design methodology of improving small experiences can improve larger experiences and KPIs of services.
Related Links
- Received the GOOD DESIGN AWARD 2023 ❘ LY Corporation R&D
- What is the Optimal Size of Characters and Line Spacing? Balancing Readability with KPI | Yahoo! JAPAN Tech Blog （Japanese only）
- Scientifically Validate Character and Line Spacing in Order to Make Text Content More Readable | GOOD DESIGN AWARD （External website）
Certified with "FIDO 2," a standard that enables safe login through use of biometrics authentication devices, etc.
Former Yahoo Japan Corporation (“Yahoo Japan”) is certified with "FIDO2," a new standard established by an industry association called FIDO Alliance, whose mission is to promote the standardization of simple and robust authentications. The company acquired this certification in the world's first FIDO2 certification test held in August 2018, and it is the only FIDO2-certified company in Japan. From October 2018, users of Android devices can log into Yahoo! JAPAN services on the Google Chrome browser by using biometric authentication, such as fingerprint authentication, and iOS device users on the Safari browser from December 2020. Both for Android and iOS, this became the world's first ever case of applying FIDO2-certified authentication to commercial services for consumers.
Related Links
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Yahoo! JAPAN Enables Fingerprint and Face Login to Its Service Apps and Smartphone Browsers | former Yahoo Japan Corporation (Press release)
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Yahoo! JAPAN Enables Fingerprint and Other Biometric Login on Android Smartphone Web Browsers | former Yahoo Japan Corporation (Press release)
- Paper : Observation Study on Usability Challenges for Fingerprint Authentication Using WebAuthn-Enabled Android Smartphones｜LY Corporation R&D
- Paper : Usability Survey on WebAuthn-Enabled Passwordless Biometric Authentication｜LY Corporation R&D (Japanese only)
Applying tags to stickers for sticker suggestions feature
In sticker suggestion feature, which recommends stickers appropriate to the users’ conversational content, it is important that stickers are tagged correctly. However, manual input of tags results in variations depending on the sensitivity of the individual entering the tags. For this reason, a video language model has been developed for automatic tagging.
Fuzzy search
Former LINE Corporation has continuously developed a library of fuzzy search to enable the extraction of information that matches the user's intent, even when the users make errors in their input. The result of this research is used in the search in Demae-can and suggestion system for LINE stickers (sftrie). The ability to present results that match user needs contributes to a better user experience.
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OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
Former LINE Corporation has promoted the development of high-precision OCR, and in July 2019, launched "CLOVA OCR" that utilizes this engine for automatic deciphering of business documents. (From April 1, 2023, CLOVA OCR is provided by WORKS MOBILE Japan Corp., an affiliated company to which the business was succeeded.) In 2021, CLOVA OCR was adopted in the project to digitally convert documents possessed by the National Diet Library of Japan.
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Automation of call centers
The results of speech recognition/synthesis technology development are being used to automate call centers. The technology is used not only to listen to user inquiries with high accuracy, but also to process them by assigning them to appropriate actions and returning the results in an easy-to-understand, friendly voice. These outcomes have been reflected in an AI telephone response service, "LINE WORKS AiCall."
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Active Communication of Research Results
Supporting the Company with advanced technology, LY Corporation Research is engaged in the research and development of next-generation internet-related technologies.
The research results are presented at conferences both in Japan and overseas, and the number of presentations in 2024 was 186 papers (115 overseas and 71 in Japan).
Research areas include mainly natural language processing, speech processing, image processing, information search, machine learning, data science, semantic web, security and privacy, interaction, crowdsourcing, multimodal, and generative AI.
2024 Major Examples of Presentations
| AAAI 2024 | 2 | MobileHCI 2024 | 1 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ICASSPP 2024 | 8 | IPIN 2024 | 2 |
| CHI 2024 | 3 | UbiComp 2024 | 1 |
| PerCom 2024 | 3 | CIKM 2024 | 2 |
| CVPR 2024 | 2 | ISS 2024 | 2 |
| IJCAI 2024 | 1 | SIGSPATIAL 2024 | 3 |
| INTERAPEECH 2024 | 8 | NeurIPS 2024 | 4 |
| ECCV 2024 | 2 | EMNLP 2024 | 1 |
Related Links
- LY Corporation R&D Awards
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Two Papers Accepted at NeurIPS 2023, a Top Conference in the Field of Machine Learning | former LINE Corporation (Press release | Japanese only)
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Two Papers Accepted at ICCV 2023, a Top Conference in the Field of Computer Vision | former LINE Corporation (Press release | Japanese only)
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Four Papers Accepted at INTERSPEECH 2023, One of World’s Largest International Conference on Speech and Acoustic Signal Processing | former LINE Corporation (Press release | Japanese only)
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Eight Papers Accepted at ICASSP 2023, the Largest International Conference on Speech and Acoustic Signal Processing | former LINE Corporation (Press release | Japanese only)
- Results of Dialogue System Live Competition 4｜DIALOGUE SYSTEM LIVE COMPETITION (External website | Japanese only)
- From 39 Billion to 82 Billion Parameters - Backstage of the Development of HyperCLOVA, LINE's Gigantic Language Model ｜AINOW (External website | Japanese only)
Research Papers by LY Corporation Research That Led to Patent Applications
Numerous patents have been obtained from research papers published by LY Corporation.
Research. Please refer to the following:
| Year | Title of research paper, name of OSS | Classification |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Understanding the Gap between Forecast Accuracy and User Perceptions: Case Study of Japanese Weather Apps | INTERNATIONAL |
| 2024 | Towards Recognizing Hover Inputs using Corneal Reflection Images Captured by Smartphone Front Camera | INTERNATIONAL |
| 2024 | Symbiosis Indoor Location Tracking: Estimating User Trajectories with Passerby Data | INTERNATIONAL |
| 2024 | Investigation of Smartphone Grasping Posture Detection Method Using Corneal Reflection Images through a Crowdsourced Experiment | INTERNATIONAL |
| 2024 | ScreenConcealer: Privacy Protection System with Visual Masking for Screen Sharing | INTERNATIONAL |
| 2024 | Detecting Ambiguous Utterances in an Intelligent Assistant | INTERNATIONAL |
| 2024 | Enhancing 360-Degree Feedback Fairness: Addressing Reviewer Bias Using Bradley-Terry Model | INTERNATIONAL |
| 2024 | Enhancing Readability with Target-Aware Double-Tap-to-Zoom Technique for Mobile Devices | INTERNATIONAL |
| 2024 | Practical Application of Tappy, a Tool for Estimating Tap Accuracy on Web Pages and Apps for Smartphones (Japanese only) | DOMESTIC |
| 2024 | Inferring Operation Errors Based on Users' Natural Interactions (Japanese only) | DOMESTIC |
| 2024 | Symbiosis Indoor Location Tracking: Estimating User Trajectories with Passerby Data | INTERNATIONAL |
| 2024 | Target-Aware Double-Tap-to-Zoom Technique for Mobile Devices | INTERNATIONAL |
| 2024 | Detecting and Recovering from Human Errors using Multimodal Sensor Data Obtained by Smartphone | INTERNATIONAL |
| 2024 | Leveraging Screen-integrated Speakers for Hand-pose Recognition in Mobile Interfaces | INTERNATIONAL |
- Papers before 2023
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Promoting Open Innovation
In order to contribute to the development of the information technology society, LY Corporation's development results and intellectual properties created internally are made available to the public in the form of OSS, etc. Many of them are being utilized in various situations. The Company believes that encouraging the creation of a healthy market will also lead to the future growth of LY Corporation.
OSS developer certification program
This is a program that certifies selected employees as developers for OSS which is strategically adopted by LY Corporation. Time used for developing specific OSS is regarded as work hours and a maximum of JPY 1 million budget per year is granted for the development of specific OSS and related activities, providing an environment in which the certified employees can work as OSS committers.
Figma Plugin
LY Corporation Research has released a Figma plugin called “Tappy,” which analyzes the size of buttons and links when designing smartphone web pages in Figma and displays the tap accuracy.
It promotes initiatives to openly share research results in the development of smartphone web pages, which LY Corporation has been working on for many years, to help solve the challenges faced by many users.
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Similar product image search using Neighborhood Graph and Tree for Indexing (NGT)
Similar product image search which uses NGT, researched and developed by LY Corporation Research, is applied in the apps of Yahoo! JAPAN and Yahoo! JAPAN Shopping and in Yahoo! JAPAN Browser.
In this similar product image search, areas that are thought to be products are detected from product images on Yahoo! JAPAN Shopping and used as search targets. Vector data representing the characteristics of the products are extracted from these areas. To search the vector data at high speed, an index is generated for the search using NGT. Applying this index, similar products can be searched at high speed using product images in Yahoo! JAPAN Shopping or images captured by cameras as queries.
NGT is software that enables high-speed retrieval of features (vector data) extracted from various data, such as text, images, and product/user data, and is available as OSS.
Related Links
- GitHub NGTv(External website)
- Neighborhood Graph and Tree for Indexing (NGT) (External website | Japanese only)
- Similar product image search (External website | Japanese only)
- 2023 Electrical Science and Engineering Promotion Award, Promotion Foundation for Electrical Science and Engineering
- Best Paper Honorable Mention Award, ACM Interactive Surfaces and Spaces Conference
- 2022 Achievement Award, Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE)
LINE services uses OSS in many of its services. The Company also encourages in-house developers to contribute to the open source community, and has released some of its in-house systems as OSS. As a member of the open source community, the Company also supports the Apache Software Foundation, a prominent non-profit organization, in addition to contributing to and releasing OSS to live in harmony with this huge ecosystem.
Released Resembla, a library for similar text string search, as OSS
Former LINE released Resembla, a library for similar text string search (approximate text string matching), to the public as OSS. Resembla was developed with a focus on improving quality and speed: improving quality by selecting and combining scales that match the properties of the text strings; and improving speed by narrowing down candidates and preprocessing the corpus.
Related Links
- Open Source | LINE Engineering (External website)
- LINE as Apache Software Foundation's Silver sponsor｜LINE Engineering (External website)
- Similar Text String Search Library "Resembla" Released to the Public｜LINE Engineering (External website | Japanese only)
- GitHub Resembla (External website)
- GitHub Trimatch (External website)
- GitHub sftrie (External website)
Released LINE Distil BERT, a light-weight Japanese language model, as OSS
Language models have been in the limelight in recent years, but from a practical standpoint, the scale of the model is an issue. Meanwhile, model contribution is important from the perspective of generating smooth dialogues, and "distillation" of large models has been proposed to resolve this tradeoff. The Company makes developments in these areas and releases some of its outcomes as OSS.
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Collaborations with External Partners
The LY Corporation Group collaborates with external partners from diverse fields, including enterprises, universities, and research institutions, to make the lives of users more convenient and more enriching. It also aims to solve various social problems through these collaborative initiatives.
Joint research by LY Corporation and NHK: Analysis of data of queries made at times of disaster for effective information provision
In search service provided by LY Corporation, user behavior reflects their immediate concerns, making search data a concentrated source of the challenges and issues faced by people at that moment. LY Corporation Research conducted joint research with NHK to analyze data of queries made at times of disasters such as heavy snow and typhoons, in order to contribute to rapid and appropriate information provision.
The research analyzes congestion levels and search keywords compared to normal times, in relation to standstill caused by heavy snowfall and typhoon damage, exploring regional characteristics and trends in information needed during disasters.
LY Corporation Research has established an effective framework where, during disasters, it analyzes search data, forms hypotheses, and uses NHK's network of correspondents to conduct on-site interviews, verifying these hypotheses from a real-world perspective.
Through this research, the LY Corporation Research aims to realize a "personalized evacuation switch" that delivers disaster information rooted in users' lives and information that they can relate to. LY Corporation provides information related to disaster prevention and mitigation through various services. The goal is to ensure that, through these services, the most appropriate information is delivered to as many people as possible, so that no one fails to evacuate or recognize a danger when there is a real threat.
Related Links
- Joint Research with NHK: Analysis of Needs in Disaster Areas | LY Corporation (Japanese only)
- "Thorough Analysis of LY Corporation Search Data: What Was Searched in Noto Peninsula..." | NHK (External website | Japanese only)
- TV Broadcast, Saturday Night Watch 9 "Current Situation in Noto as Seen Through Internet Searches" | NHK (External website | Japanese only)
In collaboration with universities, former Yahoo Japan develops a method using cameras for estimating how smartphones are held
Former Yahoo Japan Corporation, Keio University, and Tokyo Institute of Technology developed a new method for estimating the posture of users grasping smartphones. The method uses machine learning to classify corneal reflection images in the facial photos taken by front-facing cameras of smartphones.
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Former LINE Corporation and Osaka University collaborate to establish “LINE Virtual Human Joint Research Course”
On March 1, 2023, former LINE Corporation and Osaka University entered into an agreement on the establishment of a joint research course, and established “LINE Virtual Human Joint Research Course,” facilitating the research and development of virtual characters. This research course is a project to promote research and development of virtual characters, which are attracting attention in the virtual space (the Metaverse, etc.), and will conduct activities aimed at a world in which any user can freely handle virtual characters.
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Former LINE Corporation and NAVER jointly develop a super-giant language model specialized in the Japanese Language — Enabling the generation of various Japanese-language AI, such as for dialogues and translations without new development work
In 2020, former LINE Corporation and NAVER jointly made an announcement on the development of a super-giant language model specialized in the Japanese language and the construction of the infrastructure necessary for its processing. Using AI, the super-giant language model (general-purpose language model generated from a huge amount of data) enables a more natural language processing and language expression.
As of 2022, the two companies have succeeded in developing a foundation model specialized in Japanese, in the size of 82 billion parameters. As training data, the model uses more than 500 billion tokens mainly in Japanese. This is the largest amount of parameters and training data for a Japanese-based language model in the world. The companies plan to continue improving performance by increasing the amount of training data and the number of parameters.
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List of Awards
FY2024
| Award* | Organization | Recipient company* |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 Commendation for Science and Technology (Development Category) | Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan | LY Corporation |
| IPSJ Yamashita SIG Research Award | Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) | LY Corporation |
| MIRU Interactive Presentation Award | MIRU2024 | LY Corporation |
| Best Poster Award | UbiComp / ISWC 2024 | LY Corporation |
| CSS Student Paper Award |
Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) |
LY Corporation
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| Award for Outstandingly Skilled Workers (Contemporary Master Craftsman) | Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan |
LINE Corporation
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Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) |
Yahoo Japan Corporation | |
| Specially Selected Paper | Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) | Yahoo Japan Corporation |
| IPSJ/ACM Award for Early Career Contributions to Global Research | Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) / Association for Computing Machinery(ACM) | Yahoo Japan Corporation |
| Interactive Presentation Award (PC Recommendation) | Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) | Yahoo Japan Corporation |
- FY2023
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Best Paper Award at 81st IPSJ-SIGUBI Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) LY CorporationSpecially Selected Paper Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) LY Corporation2023 Electrical Science and Engineering Promotion Award Promotion Foundation for Electrical Science and Engineering LY CorporationBest Paper Award at 80th IPSJ SIGUBI Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) LY CorporationBest Paper Honorable Mention Award ACM Interactive Surfaces and Spaces Conference LY CorporationCSS2023 Incentive Award Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) LY CorporationMIRU Excellent Paper Award at MIRU2023 Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) Yahoo Japan CorporationBest Paper Award at 76 th IPSJ-SIGUBI Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) Yahoo Japan Corporation2022 Achievement Award Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers of Japan (IEICEJ) Yahoo Japan Corporation2022 SUEMATSU-Yasuharu Award Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE) Yahoo Japan CorporationBest Paper Award at DEIM2023 The Database Society of Japan Yahoo Japan Corporation2023 Commendation for Science and Technology (Development Category) Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan Yahoo Japan Corporation
- FY2022
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Best Poster Honorable Mention Annual Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces LINE CorporationBest Poster Honorable Mention Annual Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces LINE CorporationYoung Incentive Award at NLP2023 The Association for Natural Language Processing LINE CorporationSpecial Committee Award at NLP2023 The Association for Natural Language Processing Yahoo Japan CorporationKiyoshi Awaya Academic Incentive Award Acoustical Society of Japan LINE CorporationDBSJ Kambayashi Young Researcher Award The Database Society of Japan LINE CorporationBest Paper Runner-up at DEIM 2023 The Database Society of Japan Yahoo Japan CorporationBest Paper Award at 78th IPSJ-SIGUBI Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) Yahoo Japan CorporationAward of the Journal of the Society for Art and Science Volume. 20 The Society for Art and Science Yahoo Japan Corporation42th Case Study Award The Operations Research Society of Japan ZOZO NEXT, Inc.IPSJ Yamashita SIG Research Award Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) Yahoo Japan CorporationIEICE Distinguished Achievement and Contribution Award The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE) Yahoo Japan Corporation
- FY2021
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2021 IPSJ Industrial Achievement Award Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) Yahoo Japan CorporationLanguage Resource Award at NLP2022 The Association for Natural Language Processing Yahoo Japan CorporationIPSJ Yamashita SIG Research Award Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) Yahoo Japan CorporationBest Presentation Award at WISS2021 Japan Society for Software Science and Technology Yahoo Japan Corporation69th Electrical Science and Engineering Promotion Award The Promotion Foundation for Electrical Science and Engineering Yahoo Japan CorporationBest Paper Award at CSS Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) Yahoo Japan CorporationBest Paper Award at DEXA 2021 DEXA Conference Yahoo Japan Corporation
*Company names, titles and divisions are as of the time when the awards were received.