​Summary

​​​Location: The entrance to the building is to the left of the Starbucks entrance. Take the elevator to Floor 3.

​Voice AI is rapidly transforming how we interact with technology, opening the door to more natural and intuitive human–computer communication. Yet, building systems that can truly listen, understand, and converse like humans remains one of AI’s most complex frontiers. This event brings together researchers, engineers, and industry leaders to discuss the state of Voice AI today, the obstacles still ahead, and the opportunities for innovation across different domains.

​Across three talks, we will examine the technical challenges of creating reliable and natural voice assistants, the possibilities of open-ended conversational chatbots that move beyond task-specific interactions, and the real-world lessons from building a conversational banking assistant in Japan.

​​Schedule

​18:00 Doors open

​18:30 - 18:40 Community and sponsor introductions

​18:45 - 19:10 Talk 1: What's yet to be solved in Voice AI

​19:15 - 19:40 Talk 2: Towards open-ended conversational chatbots

​19:45 - 20:10 Talk 3: Talking to your bank account - Building a conversational banking voice assistant.

​20:10 - 21:00 Networking

​21:00 Event ends

​Talks

​Talk 1: What's yet to be solved in Voice AI

​Speaker: Haris Gulzar (AI Researcher, NTT)

​Abstract: While voice recognition and voice synthesis have achieved impressive performances. To build a reliable voice AI system that serves as a true and natural assistant, a lot of challenges are yet to be solved. Balancing latency with reasoning ability, long-term memory, and noisy scenarios are a few of the challenges that we will shed some light on in this presentation.

​Bio: Haris has been working in the Voice AI domain in Tokyo for over 5 years. He and his team at NTT are pushing the boundaries of speech science. Haris has experience in voice research and product prototyping while working at NTT as an AI researcher. Recently, Haris has been tackling the challenge of building AI agents specifically for voice applications.

​Talk 2: Towards open-ended conversational chatbots

​Speaker: Francisco Soares (Founder, Furious Green)

​Abstract: Most voice agents today are designed for narrow tasks: device control, setting reminders, or customer support automation. But what about small talk, the seemingly trivial conversations that make us human? In this talk, I will explore the current state of open-ended conversational chatbots, with a focus on the unique challenges of building systems that can sustain natural dialogue in Japanese.

​Bio: Francisco Soares is the founder of Furious Green, an AI and Technology training company based in Yokohama. With over 15 years of experience as a software engineer and a background in NLP, he has worked at companies including Google and CyberAgent. In addition to leading training programs through Furious Green, he also personally advises startups and companies on building AI-driven products and strategies.

​Talk 3: Talking to your bank account - Building a conversational banking voice assistant

​Speaker: Aleksandr Riabcev (Head of Tech, Habitto)

​Abstract: Voice assistants have made great strides, but bringing them into the world of finance here in Japan comes with its own unique set of challenges. At Habitto, a digital bank and financial services intermediary, we’ve just launched a beta of our AI Voice Assistant to a group of our customers. In this talk, I’ll walk through the architecture choices we made, the hurdles of handling Japanese financial conversations, and some of the lessons learned along the way. Finally, I’ll share where we’re headed next as we continue weaving AI into the future of finance.

​Bio: Alex has been building tech in Japan for over 20 years, with most of his career in finance. At Habitto, he leads engineering, integration and architecture, and recently has been driving their push into conversational finance with the mission to reinvent how people interact with financial services.

​Organizers

​Ilya Kulyatin: Fintech and AI entrepreneur with work and academic experience in the US, Netherlands, Singapore, UK, and Japan, with an MSc in Machine Learning from UCL.

​Haris Gulzar: Haris has been working in the Voice AI domain in Tokyo for over 5 years. He and his team at NTT are pushing the boundaries of speech science. Haris has experience in voice research and product prototyping while working at NTT as an AI researcher. Recently, Haris has been tackling the challenge of building AI agents specifically for voice applications.

​Our Community

​​​​​​​​Tokyo AI (TAI)

​​​​​TAI is the biggest AI community in Japan, with 2,900+ members mainly based in Tokyo (engineers, researchers, investors, product managers, and corporate innovation managers).

​​Web: https://www.tokyoai.jp/

​​​​​​​​Event Supporters

​​​DEEPCORE is a VC firm supporting AI Salon Tokyo. They operate a fund for seed and early-stage startups and KERNEL, a community supporting early entrepreneurs.