In a bid to boost the dwindling birth rate in Japan, the country is planning on matchmaking through artificial intelligence to help its residents find love.
Japan has a looming threat of seeing its population halve by 2100, as more people are turning older than new babies being born.
The nation, which has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, witnessed 865,000 births last year – a record low.
According to a report by BBC, from 2021, Japan will subsidise local governments already running/ starting projects that use AI to pair up people.
The government plans to allocate local authorities 2bn yen ($19m) in its latest effort of boosting its greying population.
Japan already has a market of in-person matchmaking service, and AI is slowly gaining momentum in the hopes that it will give a more sophisticated result. It will also widen the currently limited criteria (like income, age) for analysing and projecting a better matching.
As Japan’s population is projected to fall from 128 million in 2017 to less than 53 million by the end of the century, this endeavour serves as a ray of hope in its attempt to boost the population.