---
title: "Japan risks becoming an ‘AI colony’, its digital minister warns"
url: https://daily.dev/posts/japan-risks-becoming-an-ai-colony-its-digital-minister-warns-o01so87ub
source_url: https://thenextweb.com/news/japan-risks-becoming-an-ai-colony-its-digital-minister-warns
type: article
source: "The Next Web"
published: 2026-06-05T14:04:49.860Z
updated: 2026-06-05T14:05:10.699Z
tags: ["ai", "genai", "data-privacy", "ai-governance"]
reading_time: 3
upvotes: 0
comments: 0
language: en
---

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# Japan risks becoming an ‘AI colony’, its digital minister warns

**[The Next Web](https://daily.dev/sources/tnw)** · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

Japan's digital minister Hisashi Matsumoto has warned the country risks becoming an 'AI colony' if it falls behind in AI development, using the framing to defend a bill that would allow AI developers to access sensitive personal data — including medical and criminal records — without individual consent. The government acknowledges Japan lags other advanced economies in AI, and the bill aims to close that gap by providing access to large, high-quality datasets. Critics argue the proposal weakens protections over the most sensitive categories of personal data. Alongside the bill, Tokyo is piloting Gennai, a generative AI platform for internal government use targeting 180,000 civil servants across 39 agencies. The sovereignty-vs-privacy tension mirrors debates seen in Europe around the EU AI Act.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://thenextweb.com/news/japan-risks-becoming-an-ai-colony-its-digital-minister-warns>

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Tags: [#ai](https://daily.dev/tags/ai), [#genai](https://daily.dev/tags/genai), [#data-privacy](https://daily.dev/tags/data-privacy), [#ai-governance](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-governance)

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