Creating Customer Value by Combining APIs and Data

Rakuten treats transaction and behavioral data within its vast ecosystem of over 1.8 billion members as a core asset. Rakuten is partnering with OpenAI to accelerate the adoption of generative AI, aiming to become an 'AI empowerment company' by leveraging this data.

Starting with GPT-3.5, Rakuten introduced Code Interpreter and RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) technology to extract value from complex, unstructured data. Key use cases include the following:

• Customer Service Automation: By applying RAG to its internal knowledge base, Rakuten automated customer inquiry responses that used to take days, improving efficiency.
• Review Summarization: Analyzes hundreds of user reviews to extract and summarize key themes, structuring the shopping experience.
• B2B Insights: Enables consultants to provide corporate clients with actionable insights such as market analysis and sales trends.

With security and privacy as top priorities, Rakuten selected OpenAI as a partner after thorough due diligence. Going forward, Rakuten plans to build more advanced conversational AI experiences—such as meeting minutes generation and multilingual translation—using real-time voice and vision capabilities.