Public transportation service providers and other companies in Japan are introducing the use of artificial intelligence ( AI ) to categorize and catalog items reported lost and provide information on where to return them.
According to a Kyodo News broadcast on May 8, 2025, about 30 organizations have introduced a lost and found platform developed by Tokyo-based information technology firm Find Inc. at about 2,300 stations and other locations.
Find launched its platform in June 2023. The company has handled a total of around 1.5 million lost item reports by the end of March 2025 and around 480,000 of them have been returned.
"Until now, people who lost their belongings had to check various places by phone," said Ryu Wada, the company's chief executive.
"As more facilities use the service, handling lost and found reports will become easier as queries can be matched across a very large database," he explains.
