THE ESSENTIALS IN 30 SECONDS

  • The prototype, launched on October 30, 2026, analyzes Diet questions, searches past answers, drafts responses, anticipates follow-ups and checks for contradictions.
  • It is being trialed during the 222nd Extraordinary Session of the Diet, with a full rollout targeted for the ordinary session starting in January.
  • The Digital Agency says AI output will not be used as is: officials must verify drafts against source documents and remain responsible for final answers.

Japan's Digital Agency has added a new application to GENAI (源内, Gennai), the generative AI platform it runs for central government staff. Released as a prototype on October 30, 2026, the tool is meant to support officials who prepare answers to questions put by members of the Diet, the national parliament.

What the tool does

According to the agency, the app analyzes incoming parliamentary questions, searches past answers and supporting documents, produces draft answers, predicts likely follow-up questions and checks drafts for contradictions. The agency frames the goals as making drafting faster and more consistent, and cutting the time officials spend on routine tasks such as collecting documents.

The application is available to about 180,000 government employees, the user base the agency is targeting for GENAI in fiscal 2026. It is being offered on a trial basis during the 222nd Extraordinary Session of the Diet to assess usefulness, usability and output quality. The agency says 102 experienced officials from 16 ministries and agencies, recruited through an open call, evaluated the tool during development and that some of their feedback on layout and features has already been built in. After the trial, it plans improvements ahead of a full-scale rollout for the ordinary Diet session beginning in January.

Safeguards and open questions

The Digital Agency stresses that the app assists rather than replaces staff. It acknowledges that generative AI can produce plausible but wrong or unsupported text, and states that, as a rule, output will not be used as generated: officials are expected to check drafts against source documents for accuracy, consistency with earlier answers and policy, and wording. Policy judgments and final answers stay with officials, and ministers deliver them in the Diet.

The agency has not said which models power the tool, and it has not published results from the trial. Preparing Diet answers is often cited as a cause of late-night work in Japan's ministries; a Kyodo News report from January noted the agency hoped AI could ease those long hours. Whether the prototype actually reduces workload remains to be shown.

A broader platform push

The launch follows an October 20 announcement in which the agency began a staged rollout of Agent Chat, an environment for building and running AI agents across ministries, and targeted around December 2026 for GENAI Workbench, aimed at more advanced agents. It also published the "GENAI Standards" on governance, security and safety, developed with Japan's AI Safety Institute.