NTT Docomo Business Rolls Out More Than 200 ‘AI Bosses’ Across All 37 Units
NTT Docomo Business, the enterprise arm of Japan’s largest mobile carrier, has extended its “AI boss” programme to all 37 organisations in the company, about a year after the first ones went live in October 2025, Nikkei reported on October 7. More than 200 of the agents are now in use, modelled on department heads, section chiefs and other managers.
Each AI boss draws on a manager’s decision-making criteria and job knowledge and answers staff questions using meeting minutes and internal documents, even echoing the real manager’s speaking style. Instead of taking a finished report straight to a superior, employees show it to the AI version first, learn which points look thin from an experienced manager’s point of view, and revise before the real meeting. Each unit builds its own with Microsoft’s generative AI services, and a simple version takes about an hour, according to the Nikkei report as relayed by Seoul Economic Daily. Staff had built roughly 28,000 AI agents across the company by the end of September.
The company also runs an AI version of its president, Katsushige Kojima, known internally as “AI Koji”. It was trained on about 300,000 characters of his remarks in executive meetings. After a three-month trial with about 70 executives, around 90% said it helped them understand his thinking, and it was opened to roughly 10,000 employees in July. One AI strips client names and contract amounts from the source minutes, a second AI checks the result, and a person spot-checks 10% of the processed material.
What it means in practice
The novelty is that the AI now imitates the manager down the corridor rather than the chief executive, turning a tool for explaining strategy into one for everyday work. Other Japanese groups have tried executive clones: Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group built an “AI CEO”, and Kirin Holdings uses an “AI executive” in management meetings. The limits are real. An AI boss only knows what managers have written down, so it may repeat judgements the real manager has since changed, and a familiar tone can make an answer sound more reliable than it is. Figures and deadlines still need checking against the original documents.
Docomo Business says AI already resolves eight in ten internal help-desk queries, and it has trained 14,000 employees through an in-house certification. It aims to raise productivity 30% by fiscal 2030 compared with fiscal 2024 and is considering selling the system to outside clients. The push sits alongside group work such as NTT and SoftBank’s in-Japan AI cybersecurity service and other enterprise deployments like Sumitomo Life’s AI-tailored proposals for sales agents.
What to watch: whether the AI bosses are sold externally, how the company keeps answers accurate as managers’ views change, and how staff respond to agents modelled on named supervisors.