AVITA

AVITA Inc. is a Tokyo company, established on June 1, 2021 and based in Meguro-ku, that develops services built on avatars and generative AI: the AVACOM avatar customer-service service, AI role-play and AI interview services, avatar production, and business-process outsourcing staffed by avatar workers.¹ Its CEO is Hiroshi Ishiguro, a distinguished professor at Osaka University and one of Japan’s best-known robotics researchers.¹² AVITA says AVACOM lets remote operators serve customers through avatars, so that stores and reception desks can run with fewer or no on-site staff, and that it also handles online customer service.³

Its main role case is in convenience-store work with Lawson. The two companies announced a partnership on September 22, 2022, with AVACOM to go into a new “Green Lawson” store in Tokyo at the end of November 2022, staffed by 10 to 30 avatar workers recruited for it; they aimed to train 50 certified avatar operators for 10 stores in Tokyo and Osaka during fiscal 2023, and 1,000 nationwide during fiscal 2025.² By September 2024 Lawson had avatar staff in 14 stores across six prefectures, and it opened an Osaka store with AVITA whose eat-in corner has an AI-driven avatar that reacts to customers’ behavior.⁴ Ryutsuu News reported in July 2026 that the trial covered 78 stores and about 70 remote operators, including one working from Sweden. Operators guide shoppers and explain the self-checkouts, one operator can serve several stores at once, and Lawson said self-checkout use rose by 15% or more while staff time on register work fell by about 1.5 hours or more per store on average.⁵ MetaRoles covers the case in AI in-store sales assistants and AI and robot receptionists.

AVITA also announced in August 2026 a trial of a KDDI and AVITA humanoid for customer guidance on Osaka Metro, and claims that AVACOM has the most installed terminals in Japan (company-stated).³