Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) is becoming the latest large scale shipping company to invest in the development and implementation of artificial intelligence (AI). The shipping giant is using AI for a number of use cases, and invested in Japanese AI firm, Ghelia, which was previously funded by Sony.

The Partnership
Ghelia has been working with a number of players across multiple sectors and industries to becoming a broad AI-based solutions company, implementing artificial intelligence across a number of businesses. According to both Ghelia and NYK, their new partnership heavily focuses on the practical application of AI in the shipping industry, where digitization and adoption of AI are needed on a global scale very badly.

Emerging challenges such as the sheer amount of cargo being shipping in today’s world, NYK feels there’s a widespread need for AI including safety precautions. The companies have also highlighted their partnership looks to establish a fully autonomous ship system that goes hand and hand with the decarbonization goals the industry has for itself by the year 2050.

“We are convinced that this capital and business alliance with Ghelia, which has been providing AI solutions to a wide variety of customers through the company’s strength in AI development and deep reinforcement learning, will hugely contribute to further technological development in the shipping industry and the promotion of business DX through the utilization of AI,” said, NYK’s Executive Officer Hideki Suzuki. “In the future, we expect to not only practically utilize AI technologies in NYK but also work on creating new value by providing AI services that lead the shipping industry.”

The Impact
Like many, NYK has been looking to the future and goals of decarbonization with next-generation ships. Within their partnership with Ghelia, NYK will work to realize the most largescale use case of AI in the shipping industry, not stopping with decarbonization and autonomous ship runs, but expand to greater applications withing the shipping industry and maritime sector as a whole. These developments include marketing, PR, and sales services, to name a few.