Japanese youths fear rejection so intensely, many avoid dating altogether, turning to dating simulators for emotional fulfilment. So, we gave them one. Except ours was powered by AI that led to actual dates. When singles chatted our approachable avatar, Natural Language Processing (NLP) responded with answers crowdsourced from potential matches—eventually leading to one perfect match.

Not only did our brave new thinking raise confidence across the country, but formed the foundation of NTT’s Avatar Personality Engine, powering an entourage of Japan’s company mascots.