Keynotes
Keynote 1
Dr. Yuki Mitsufuji (Sony Group Corporation)
AI for Creators: Pushing Creative Abilities to the Next Level
Abstract
In recent years, Japan’s content industry, including music, animation, film, and gaming, has been increasingly recognized as a potential second pillar of the nation’s export economy. At the same time, the rapid advancement of generative AI is enabling new forms of creative expression and improving production efficiency, while also raising critical challenges such as intellectual property infringement, style imitation, and the unintended reproduction of training data. In this talk, I present two complementary pillars for addressing these challenges: Creative AI, which expands human creativity, and Protective AI, which safeguards creators and rights holders. The former accelerates new forms of expression, enhances production workflows, and supports global scalability. The latter sustains a healthy creative ecosystem by mitigating intellectual property infringement, controlling style imitation, and preventing the unintended reproduction of training data in generated outputs. For Japan’s content industry to strengthen its global competitiveness, advancing generative capability alone is not sufficient. It is equally important to develop technological foundations that preserve the value of creative works, treating creative and protective capabilities as two essential and complementary drivers of long-term growth.
Biography
Dr. Mitsufuji received his Ph.D. in Information Science and Technology from the University of Tokyo and currently serves as a Visiting Research Professor at New York University. He was formerly a Specially Appointed Associate Professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology. In 2025, he was named to the Stanford University and Elsevier “World’s Top 2% Scientists” list, and he is currently a Distinguished Engineer in machine learning at Sony Group Corporation.
Keynote 2
Dr. Hironobu Takagi (Executive Director, Miraikan; Project Professor, Graduate School of Science and Technology, Keio University)
AI Suitcase: A Navigation Robot for People with Visual Impairments
Abstract
Navigating a city requires people to recognize sidewalks, obstacles, and other pedestrians in order to move safely, while also checking intersections, turns, and signs to reach their destination. For people with visual impairments, however, obtaining such visual information is not easy, and even with existing mobility aids, many challenges remain in moving independently and freely.
We have been developing the “AI Suitcase,” an autonomous navigation robot that offers a new means for people with visual impairments to travel safely and independently to their destinations. Users can reach their destination simply by walking alongside the AI Suitcase. By leveraging AI, the system can also provide verbal explanations of the surrounding environment, helping to compensate for the visual information they are unable to access.
In this talk, I will introduce the motivation behind the development of the AI Suitcase and explain how it is realized through robotics technologies. I will also share feedback and expectations from users obtained through field trials at Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan, and the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan). Finally, I will discuss the technical, regulatory, and business challenges involved in social implementation, as well as the path toward bringing this technology into everyday use.
Biography
He is Project Professor at the Graduate School of Science and Technology, Keio University, and Executive Director of the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan). He received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Tokyo and has led research and development in accessibility since joining IBM Research – Tokyo in 1999. His work spans web accessibility, human-computer interaction, crowdsourcing, healthcare, and real-world accessibility systems. He has received Best Paper Awards at ACM ASSETS in 2002 and 2009, as well as an Achievement Award from Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in 2011. His recent research focuses on the AI Suitcase project, which develops autonomous navigation robots to support independent mobility for blind and low-vision users and aims to bring this technology into everyday use.