AI tool aims to help conserve Japan's cherry trees
The "sakura" season is feverishly anticipated by locals and visitors alike, with the profusion of the stunning blossoms marking the start of spring.
But many of the trees are reaching 70 to 80 years old, well beyond their prime blooming age.
This means increasing costs to tend to the trees and maintain popular flowering spots.
To help authorities identify ailing specimens, brewing giant Kirin developed a tool called Sakura AI Camera.
It tells users the condition and the age of the trees based on photos they take with their smartphones and upload them to a website.
A five-point scale -- only available in Japanese for now -- ranges from "very healthy" to "worrying".
A tree with healthy flowers blooming densely all the way to the tips of the branches gets top marks.
The artificial intelligence tool has been trained using 5,000 images of cherry trees with the help of experts.
The photos are then mapped on the Sakura AI Camera website with details such as tree condition and location.
"We heard that the preservation of sakura requires manpower and money and that it's difficult to gather information," Risa Shioda from Kirin told AFP.
"I think we can contribute by making it easier to plan for conservation," she said.
About 20,000 photos have been collected since the launch last month, with the data available online for free for local authorities.
- Worth a million -
According to Tokyo's Meguro Ward, famous for its riverbanks lined with cherry trees, replanting a new one costs around one million yen ($6,800).
Hiroyuki Wada of the Japan Tree Doctors Association, who inspects cherry trees in major spots in Tokyo, helped supervise the AI tool.
He said he hopes that it will help experts study the environmental reasons behind the degradation of some of the trees he sees.
In part, he blames climate change.
"I'm very worried. Changes in the environment are usually gradual, but now it's visible," he told AFP.
"There are impacts from the heat, and of course the lack of rainfall," he said.
"The age of the trees naturally makes the situation more serious," he added.
Japan's weather agency said in January that last year was the hottest since records began, like other nations.
Kirin began donating some of its profits for the preservation of cherry trees last year, as a way to "pay back" to the communities.
Alcohol, especially beer, is one of the drinks enjoyed at "hanami" flower-viewing parties beneath the trees, Shioda said.
Cherry blossoms symbolise the fragility of life in Japanese culture as full blooms only last about a week before the petals start falling off trees.
The season is also considered one of change as it marks the start of the new business year, with many university graduates starting their first full-time jobs and older colleagues shifting to new positions.
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Miami Herald
2 days ago
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This marks a fundamental shift in data collection. Rather than relying on surveillance or explicit prompts, AI companions encourage users to divulge intimate details through seemingly organic conversation. South Korea's Iruda chatbot illustrates how these systems can become vessels for harassment and abuse when poorly regulated. Seemingly benign applications can quickly move into problematic territory when companies fail to implement proper safeguards. Previous cases also show that AI companions designed with feminized characteristics often become targets for corruption and abuse, mirroring broader societal inequalities in digital environments. Grok's companions aren't simply another controversial tech product. It's plausible to expect that other LLM platforms and big tech companies will soon experiment with their own characters in the near future. The collapse of the boundaries between productivity, companionship and exploitation demands urgent attention. The age of AI and government partnerships Despite Grok's troubling history, Musk's AI company xAI recently secured major government contracts in the United States. This new era of America's AI Action Plan, unveiled in July 2025, had this to say about biased AI: "[The White House will update] federal procurement guidelines to ensure that the government only contracts with frontier large language model developers who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias." Given the overwhelming instances of Grok's race-based hatred and its potential for replicating sexism in our society, its new government contract serves a symbolic purpose in an era of doublethink around bias. As Grok continues to push the envelope of "pornographic productivity," nudging users into increasingly intimate relationships with machines, we face urgent decisions that veer into our personal lives. We are beyond questioning whether AI is bad or good. Our focus should be on preserving what remains human about us. Jul Parke is a doctoral candidate in media, technology & culture at the University of Toronto. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The views and opinions in this commentary are solely those of the author. Copyright 2025 UPI News Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
