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Hello and welcome to today’s news from TotemoTech on August 22nd, 2023. In today’s news, Bandai Namco Entertainment has announced the temporary suspension of the smartphone game ‘Sword Art Online: Variant Showdown’ for a year-long maintenance. The company plans to rebuild the foundational aspects of the game for fundamental improvements. Moving on, Mitsubishi Electric has revealed its expansion of air conditioners equipped with the ‘EmoCoTech’ feature, which measures brain activity to control settings such as temperature. This enhancement aims to address the decrease in brain activity levels during telework. Next, the Personal Information Protection Commission has released a pamphlet highlighting key points for caution when utilizing AI-generated services. The pamphlet provides guidance for businesses and government agencies that plan to use user-inputted information as training data for AI. Shifting gears, Nifty has shared the results of a survey showing that 32% of elementary and middle school students with online friends have shared false personal information on the internet. Among them, 71% have falsified their age. Moving on to transportation news, Tokyu Corporation announced its plan to conduct a verification experiment on credit card touch payment and QR code-based boarding services on the ‘Denentoshi Line.’ This experiment aims to explore convenient payment options for passengers. In the world of gaming, SpicySoft has made a comeback with the popular casual game ‘Ito Tooshi,’ which was a hit during the era of feature phones (garake). The game is now available on TikTok, with the added feature of being playable using facial gestures. Lastly, Energy, the company behind the ‘Free Electricity’ plan that gained attention for offering up to 10,000 yen of monthly electricity for free, has announced their second plan called ‘Bit Denki.’ This plan allows users to accumulate Bitcoin as they consume electricity. That wraps up today’s news from TotemoTech. Stay tuned for more updates on the latest tech developments. And that’s all for today’s news. Thanks for listening to TotemoTech.

Keywords - japan, tech, news