Yahoo Japan is all in on AI. The company has ordered all employees to use generative AI, with the goal of doubling productivity within the next three years.
It’s another volley in the battle to see if AI tech can live up to the many promises made by brands like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, and ClaudeAI — promises that have been catching a lot of flack recently.
Yahoo Japan has a plan. But is it all in hand or just a bland AI rebrand grandstand? We’ve got the write-up here, so take a scan.
Yahoo Japan Plans to Use AI for Research, Other Tasks
Mandating AI use isn’t uncommon for tech giants these days. Now that Yahoo Japan is joining the crowd, it’s setting some clear expectations surrounding how generative AI tools should be used, and what tasks they’ll be replacing for the company’s 11,000 staffers.
That list includes research, search, document creation and meetings. These tasks, according to the company’s estimates, take up about 30% of employees’ collective work hours.
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According to a report from PR Watch, that’s just a start for the company, which further plans to double work productivity over the next three years.
The company is already using an internal AI-powered work efficiency tool, “SeekAI,” for expense settlement and other chores.
Do AI Tools Boost Productivity?
The path towards a 100% productivity gain via AI tools doesn’t seem like an easy one: The types of tasks that AI helps with just don’t add up to a huge part of most employees’ workload.
Plus, the time it takes to doublecheck an AI’s output in order to screen out inaccuracies or hallucinations will count against the total time saved overall.
Some studies back this up, such as a recent one that took a look at early-2025 AI tools’ impact on the productivity of experienced open-source developers. The results? The developers self-reported that they were faster, but in reality were 19% slower when relying on AI.
Companies Continue Boosting Profits Through AI
There’s no denying the big reason why companies are still so focused on exploring generative AI tools to the fullest extent, however: It’s a money saver.
Look no further than a recently leaked report on an internal presentation at Microsoft in which Microsoft’s chief commercial officer Judson Althoff said that they had saved more than $500 million in 2024 by automating their call centers with AI functionality. The same company has also led several rounds of job cuts that have seen thousands of workers lose their livelihoods.
Yahoo Japan isn’t cutting any positions right now. The company may see its productivity soar across the next few years with the aid of generative AI. If it doesn’t, though, the example set by Microsoft might lead Yahoo leadership to consider job cuts instead.
