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Japan’s Studio Ousia unveils bot solution leveraging Quiz Bowl-winning technologies

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Studio Ousia revealed last week that it had completed an AI (artificial intelligence) inquiry response system using deep learning named QA Engine and that the system was adopted to the auto-answering system of Japan’s cloud accounting system Freee as its first client. The system supports the questions-and-answers style and can hand over questions to human operators when users are dissatisfied with the answers. Freee expects an improvement in customer satisfaction and the efficiency of helpdesk works through the QA Engine adoption. Studio Ousia won an AI quiz competition in Quiz Bowl style at an international conference focused on natural language processing NAACL (North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics) held in San Diego last June. QA Engine was developed leveraging the competition-winning technologies. The firm plans to launch QA Engine as an API (application program interface) service of elemental technologies applicable to answer support system in call centers, human resource matching system or chatbot. See also: Japan’s Studio Ousia wins global NEEL Challenge competition with Entity Linking technology Japan’s Studio Ousia to launch new affiliate solution for bloggers Japan-based Phroni introduces smart add-ons for Dolphin and Sleipnir mobile browsers As recent…

Image credit: 123RF

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Studio Ousia revealed last week that it had completed an AI (artificial intelligence) inquiry response system using deep learning named QA Engine and that the system was adopted to the auto-answering system of Japan’s cloud accounting system Freee as its first client. The system supports the questions-and-answers style and can hand over questions to human operators when users are dissatisfied with the answers. Freee expects an improvement in customer satisfaction and the efficiency of helpdesk works through the QA Engine adoption.

Studio Ousia won an AI quiz competition in Quiz Bowl style at an international conference focused on natural language processing NAACL (North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics) held in San Diego last June. QA Engine was developed leveraging the competition-winning technologies. The firm plans to launch QA Engine as an API (application program interface) service of elemental technologies applicable to answer support system in call centers, human resource matching system or chatbot.

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As recent topics in this field, Japanese online shopping mall Lohaco’s inquiry response system named Manami-san, which was developed based on a chatbot Caiwa provided by Exiis-Lab, received attention by becoming able to cover one-third of all inquiries to its customer support service. AI developer AL+ (pronounced as “alts”) developed an API Rewritable Memory-based Retrieval (RMR) as a core technology of chatbot and launched a bot development environment AL+ BotFramework supporting LINE or Twitter too. Japan’s BPO (business process outsourcing) / call center service major TransCosmos (TSE:9715) invested in New York-based bot development environment startup Reply.ai this month, and announced that the firm is going to localize the platform for the Japanese market while focusing on introduction to customer support services of the Japanese enterprises.

Studio Ousia was founded through the Keio University SFC (Shonan Fujisawa Campus)’s incubation program, and launched a keyword autolink plugin for smartphone / browser named Phroni in 2012. The firm raised 70 million yen (about $610,000) from Nissei Capital in March of the same year in its series A round, and 100 million yen (about $870,000) from Tokyo-based system developer NID (TSE:2349) in August 2014.

Studio Ousia CEO Ikuya Yamada explains the base technologies of QA Engine at NAACL
Image credit: Jordan Boyd-Graber

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Japan’s Studio Ousia wins global NEEL Challenge competition with Entity Linking technology

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See the original story in Japanese. Studio Ousia is a Japanese startup known for keyword mining and linking solutions such as Linkify and LinkPlaza. The company announced Tuesday that it had won the top prize at Name Entity Recognition and Linking or NEEL, the global competition honing Entity Linking technology’s accuracy last week. The competition was held as part of the WWW2015 conference in Florence, Italy. Entity Linking is a technology of natural language processing that links keywords in text with a knowledge base such as Wikipedia. At the competition, each participant’s system was scored by its analysis accuracy – and Studio Ousia won the top prize. While most other competitors scored about 40 points, Studio Ousia’s system scored more than 80 to win the top prize, proving outstanding accuracy at such a global stage. The company is developing a commercial-use service based on the technology used at the competition, with the aim to launch it under the name Semantic Kernel this summer at the earliest. Studio Ousia was born out of an incubation program by Keio University Shonan-Fujisawa Campus in 2012, releasing a keyword linking plug-in for smartphone browser apps, called Phroni. In the same year, the company fundraised 70 million yen…

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Studio Ousia CTO Ikuya Yamada receives the top prize at NEEL Challenge, Florence, Italy.  Photo courtesy of Studio Ousia

See the original story in Japanese.

Studio Ousia is a Japanese startup known for keyword mining and linking solutions such as Linkify and LinkPlaza. The company announced Tuesday that it had won the top prize at Name Entity Recognition and Linking or NEEL, the global competition honing Entity Linking technology’s accuracy last week. The competition was held as part of the WWW2015 conference in Florence, Italy.

neel-challenge-score-list

Entity Linking is a technology of natural language processing that links keywords in text with a knowledge base such as Wikipedia. At the competition, each participant’s system was scored by its analysis accuracy – and Studio Ousia won the top prize. While most other competitors scored about 40 points, Studio Ousia’s system scored more than 80 to win the top prize, proving outstanding accuracy at such a global stage.

The company is developing a commercial-use service based on the technology used at the competition, with the aim to launch it under the name Semantic Kernel this summer at the earliest.

Studio Ousia was born out of an incubation program by Keio University Shonan-Fujisawa Campus in 2012, releasing a keyword linking plug-in for smartphone browser apps, called Phroni. In the same year, the company fundraised 70 million yen ($570,000) from Nissay Capital, followed by an additional 100 million yen ($812,000) funding from Tokyo-based system integrator NID (TSE:2349) last August.

www2015-venue-entrance
Photo courtesy of Studio Ousia

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by Masaru Ikeda and Kurt Hanson
Proofread by “Tex” Pomeroy

Japan’s keyword linking tech developer Studio Ousia raises $1M for new app

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See the original story in Japanese. Japan’s Studio Ousia, a startup developing keyword mining and linking solutions, announced Tuesday that it has fundraised 100 million yen ($1 million) from Tokyo-based system integration company NID (TSE:2349). According to NID, the investor has taken a 33.5% stake in Studio Ousia. Studio Ousia will use the funds to strengthen the development of new apps based on the Entity Linking technology. Studio Ousia is an standout graduate from Keio University SFC’s incubation program. In 2012, the company launched a smartphone browser add-on product called Phroni, and funraised 70 million yen (about $864,000) from Nissay Capital. Studio Ousia’s product portfolio includes Linkify, a keyword linking SDK (software developers kit) for mobile developers, as well as LinkPlaza, an affiliate solution for bloggers launched last year. It’s unclear as to what kind of app they will release as a result of their further development efforts, but we understand that they will emphasize apps development for the advertising sector as well as user real-world connection. For example, these include an app which displays an online reference on the smartglass screen by recognizing what are being looked at through a smartglass device. With the improvement in smart devices, people…

studio-ousia-nid_logos

See the original story in Japanese.

Japan’s Studio Ousia, a startup developing keyword mining and linking solutions, announced Tuesday that it has fundraised 100 million yen ($1 million) from Tokyo-based system integration company NID (TSE:2349). According to NID, the investor has taken a 33.5% stake in Studio Ousia. Studio Ousia will use the funds to strengthen the development of new apps based on the Entity Linking technology.

Studio Ousia is an standout graduate from Keio University SFC’s incubation program. In 2012, the company launched a smartphone browser add-on product called Phroni, and funraised 70 million yen (about $864,000) from Nissay Capital.

Studio Ousia’s product portfolio includes Linkify, a keyword linking SDK (software developers kit) for mobile developers, as well as LinkPlaza, an affiliate solution for bloggers launched last year.

It’s unclear as to what kind of app they will release as a result of their further development efforts, but we understand that they will emphasize apps development for the advertising sector as well as user real-world connection.

For example, these include an app which displays an online reference on the smartglass screen by recognizing what are being looked at through a smartglass device. With the improvement in smart devices, people now want many alternative user interfaces beyond the keyboard. So the company sees a huge potential market out there.

Japan’s Studio Ousia to launch new affiliate solution for bloggers

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Studio Ousia is the Tokyo-based startup known for its smartphone browser add-on Phroni. That service scans whatever website you’re browsing and augment the keywords with links to useful information resources such as Wikipedia or YouTube. The startup is currently developing a new affiliate solution for bloggers called Linkplaza, which is scheduled to launch by the end of the year. Today the startup began gathering 100 beta users who can try out the technology and give feedback. The new service is a server-side solution instead of what they’ve been doing with Phroni on the client-side. For media publishers or bloggers, you can easily add affiliate links to texts in your post by inserting a few lines of code to your blogging application. When your reader mouses over any of the links, a menu featuring supplementary links will be pop up on screen. In this space, we’ve seen several competitors develop similar technologies, such as Skimlinks and Viglink. Back in April, Kyodo News Agency reported that Skimlinks had raised an unknown amount of investments from NYC-based Greycroft Partners, Texas-based blog network Forum Foundry, Japanese angel investors Hiro Maeda, and Ryota Matsuzaki to expand to global markets, including Japan. This seems to indicate…

logo-linkplaza

Studio Ousia is the Tokyo-based startup known for its smartphone browser add-on Phroni. That service scans whatever website you’re browsing and augment the keywords with links to useful information resources such as Wikipedia or YouTube. The startup is currently developing a new affiliate solution for bloggers called Linkplaza, which is scheduled to launch by the end of the year. Today the startup began gathering 100 beta users who can try out the technology and give feedback.

The new service is a server-side solution instead of what they’ve been doing with Phroni on the client-side. For media publishers or bloggers, you can easily add affiliate links to texts in your post by inserting a few lines of code to your blogging application. When your reader mouses over any of the links, a menu featuring supplementary links will be pop up on screen.

In this space, we’ve seen several competitors develop similar technologies, such as Skimlinks and Viglink. Back in April, Kyodo News Agency reported that Skimlinks had raised an unknown amount of investments from NYC-based Greycroft Partners, Texas-based blog network Forum Foundry, Japanese angel investors Hiro Maeda, and Ryota Matsuzaki to expand to global markets, including Japan. This seems to indicate that the space will pick up momentum in the Japanese blogsphere soon as well.

Studio Ousia is an standout graduate from Keio University SFC’s incubation program. The company raised 70 million yen (about $864,000) from Nissay Capital back in February of last year.

link plaza