SB C&S Adds Aww's HITO AI Virtual Human To Its Lineup
The deal puts Aww's virtual human work in front of SB C&S's nationwide reseller reach, at a point when labor shortages and inbound tourism are pushing companies toward AI that sits at the front desk rather than behind a chat window.
Reporting from 1 source: ASCII.jp.
SB C&S will begin handling Aww's HITO interactive AI virtual human on October 22, 2026. HITO reproduces a human appearance on screen and talks with visitors in real time, covering reception, facility guidance, FAQ response and multilingual customer service. It runs on commercially available PCs, monitors, microphones and speakers, supports up to 15 languages based on Japanese, English and Chinese, and can be deployed in as little as a week when an existing character is used.
The product's bottleneck is speed. HITO processes speech recognition, a large language model, speech synthesis and lip-sync in real time, with responses as fast as 0.85 seconds and about 1 to 2 seconds on average.
Companies can register their own information as a knowledge base and set tone, expressions and prohibited topics. Aww also draws on its work running the virtual influencer imma to design personas, including digital twins of real people. Targeted settings include tourism and transport, local government, medical care, retail, hotels and corporate reception. Full equipment rental is an option.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.