Here at Mercari, most members have already started using AI in their daily work as we move toward becoming AI-Native.
But what exactly do we mean by being “AI-Native”? What kind of mindset or type of employee does “AI-Native” refer to?

To shed light on how Mercari’s AI-Native professionals are making the most of AI, we have started a new interview series called “Yurino’s AI Question Corner,” featuring Yurino Horiuchi (@Yurino)—a Mercari intern who currently works on the AI Task Force and will be joining us as a permanent member soon!

For our very first episode, @Yurino chatted with Yuka Ochiai (@Yuka), the manager of the IP & New Laws Team, which handles intellectual property and more in the Legal division. She’s a member of the AI Task Force PMO, and also manages the AI Governance Team, which leads company-wide AI governance.

@Yuka is breaking down barriers between Legal and other teams to lead the charge on AI adoption in Mercari. In this interview, she shares why she believes AI gives us wings. Enjoy this lively chat between two true AI fans!

Starting the day by saying good morning to ChatGPT

@Yurino: @Yuka, how do you usually use AI?

@Yuka: For me, starting work basically means opening up ChatGPT at this point. The first thing I do is open up ChatGPT and say, “Morning! What should I work on today?” I’ve turned it into my personal coach that helps me map out my day. And every time I finish a task, I let ChatGPT know and get a little praise. Honestly, it feels like I’m getting real coaching and genuine mental support.

In my personal life, I bombard ChatGPT with all sorts of questions—it feels like having endless conversations with a sage who seems to know everything about the universe. It prompts me to think of more and more things; I feel like my brain’s operating system is getting an upgrade. To me, AI is like having a wealth of knowledge as my mentor. Sometimes, I’ll also ask it to help me do a bit of self-reflection. Based on our conversation history, ChatGPT has a pretty good sense of who I am. If I ask it “What kind of person am I?” it replies saying that I’m someone who loves order and enjoys bringing chaos into line. It knows me so well. (laughs)

@Yurino: So you use it both as a mentor and a secretary.

@Yuka: That’s right. I also use it when I need a complicated concept explained to me. At Mercari, I work with people in a variety of roles and teams every day, so there are times when someone sends me something that is just a bit too technical for me to follow. When that happens, I copy the message into ChatGPT and ask it to explain it to me as if I were a middle school student. I’ve tried all sorts of prompts, but for me, the middle school level feels just right.

I also regularly get questions from the AI Governance Team about how to use AI internally. If someone asks me how to add AI to a product, for example, my first step is to hand the request over to Gemini, Google’s generative AI agent, using a custom agent (Gem). The Gem assigns the AI the role of an AI ethics expert and sets the criteria for judgment and output format in advance.

Another way I use AI is to help me generate all my ideas from scratch. If I have to give a speech in front of people, I talk through my ideas using ChatGPT’s voice conversation mode, then tell it to tidy things up for me—and voilà, it puts together an outline. I usually let the AI draft the script, then I give it feedback to fix certain parts. We work on it together, bouncing ideas back and forth as we go.

Holding seminars after just one month of AI usage based on two-word prompts

@Yurino: @Yuka, you’ve hosted all sorts of open-door sessions (casual in-house study sessions) here at the company, haven’t you? So, what made you decide to really get behind using AI in the first place?

@Yuka: Back when ChatGPT first appeared around 2023, there was a period when I avoided using it because I thought AI couldn’t be trusted to tell the truth. But then @gomichan joined us in July 2024 and ran a seminar showing us fun ways to use it, and that really inspired me. She told us all, “Just go all out and use AI for everything!” So, I took her advice and dove right in, and it turned out to be a lot of fun.

When I first started using it, I thought I had to write long, detailed prompts. But then I discovered that AI agents respond just fine to short prompts like “summarize this,” “translate this,” or even “help me write a letter.” So, I started looking into simple two-word prompts that anyone can use, and I got completely hooked. After devouring a bunch of books on AI, gathering up handy prompts, and getting some AI lessons from @gomichan, I hosted some beginner seminars in August—just one month after I started using AI. I was so excited to play around with AI that I stayed up late so many nights! I wanted to share my feelings of surprise and excitement with everyone. I wanted to let them know that, once you give it a try, it’s actually pretty easy!

@Yurino: Wow! Getting seminars off the ground after just one month is some serious speed.

@Yuka: I wanted to shout from the rooftops: getting the hang of AI doesn’t take much time at all! I wanted people to know that the more you use it, the quicker it clicks, so it’s definitely not too late to jump in and get started. 

@Yurino: The titles of the beginner seminars had a playful feel—names like “Getting Friendly with AI” and “Productivity Boost Week” really set the tone, didn’t they? The fact that you took a fun, upbeat approach really helped encourage people from other organizations to start using AI.

@Yuka: I’m glad to hear that! What mattered most to me was making things as easy and accessible as possible. I wanted to suggest simple ideas that anyone could try, like the two-word prompts, and make sure everyone just had fun with it at first. I believe the most important thing is to let people know they don’t need any prior knowledge, and to help them see for themselves that AI isn’t hard and is actually super useful! The real key is encouraging a change in mindset. The participants of those initial sessions responded very positively. People commented saying that they were amazed at the technology and excited about AI, and that made me feel like my feelings really came through in the presentations.

Building up knowledge with an eye toward cross-functional sharing, and strategically driving AI adoption

@Yurino: Of the open-door sessions you’ve held, has there been any one session that really stood out to you?

@Yuka: That would be the “Steal Our Knowledge!” seminar—a jam-packed session featuring everything the legal division had learned in a year. We shared insights from our beginner sessions, AI hackathons, the Everyday AI project (a project to encourage members to incorporate AI into their daily work), and our AI-Native Roadmap, all in one place.

@Yurino: That phrase, “Steal Our Knowledge,” really left an impression!

@Yuka: Thank you! (laughs) What really mattered was placing emphasis on gaining specialist knowledge with the intention of sharing it with other teams. We even added the criteria “cross-function applicability” as an evaluation criterion for the AI hackathon. For example, the prompts we use for legal document checks might also come in handy for the accounting and governance teams when they’re reviewing documents. That’s why, right from the hackathon stage, I encouraged everyone to think beyond just their own team and build something that other teams could use too. In fact, we gathered all the use cases from the Everyday AI project that could be applied across different teams, put them into a handy table, and shared it with the whole company. As a result, more and more teams are jumping on board and making use of them.

@Yurino: You had your sights set on rolling this out company-wide right from the start, didn’t you? By the way, one tool I found really handy during the study session was Google’s NotebookLM. You just pick a source document, and it’ll answer anything you ask based on that!

@Yuka: That’s NotebookLM’s strength—it answers your questions based on the documents you upload, so it’s super reliable and much less likely to make things up. Also, being able to upload large documents is a plus.

@Yurino: To be honest, I first started using NotebookLM when I checked my answers to the company-wide e-learning quiz on generative AI risks. That test is difficult, isn’t it?

@Yuka: I was the one who created that e-learning course, and to be honest, I made the test deliberately challenging.

@Yurino: Wait, really?!

@Yuka: Yes. I designed the e-learning to encourage interactive learning with AI. First, I made the NotebookLM page—complete with the attached e-learning materials—available to everyone in the company. I intentionally set the comprehension test at a level where you can’t pass on your first try, so participants could really experience working out answers by interacting with NotebookLM. Setting a task that naturally led members to use AI helped spark wider adoption of AI.

@Yurino: That’s very strategic engagement.

Turning thoughts into words with AI—taking on the challenge of Legal AI agents

@Yurino: If you could change one thing in your work with AI tomorrow, what would you want to change?

@Yuka: I want to create a Legal AI agent that anyone can use to get feedback on legal ideas. When someone in the business division wants to launch a new venture, the Legal Team is often swamped and can’t always make time to handle their request. With an AI agent, business division members can fine-tune their business plans by bouncing ideas off the agent. Right now, the AI Governance Team is busy building a similar agent.

@Yurino: How are you creating it?

@Yuka: I gave the AI all my past response logs and asked it what kind of criteria I use when drafting an answer. The AI then organized and listed out my decision-making criteria for me. I shared my entire thought process for evaluating cases, so the prompt now answers almost just like I would.

@Yurino: So it’s taken on the way you think.

@Yuka: Exactly. AI makes it super easy to put your knowledge into words. You can then create an AI agent and send it to others, which makes passing on tasks a breeze.

@Yurino: How do you think legal work will change in the future?

@Yuka: I expect that tasks like contract reviews and other ad hoc cases will be handled by AI agents, freeing members up to get more deeply involved in management decisions and business strategy. Thanks to AI, we are now more efficient and have more time to focus on creating value, which is something we couldn’t get to before. I think this will indirectly help people level up their business skills.

AI gives us wings to deepen and broaden our thinking

@Yurino: To wrap things up, here’s a question I want to ask everyone in this series… @Yuka, what does AI mean to you?

@Yuka: To put it simply, it’s all about wings. To elaborate a bit more, it’s about gaining the ability to do things you couldn’t do before—an idea that really connects with Mercari’s mission of “unleash potential.” Just as having wings lets you soar freely through the sky, AI allows you to quickly grasp topics outside your field of expertise. Also, that knowledge keeps deepening and expanding as you work together with the AI agent. I feel like AI has given me the wings of thought.

@Yurino: AI is like having wings… how cool is that! Some people find using AI fun and see it as a way to level up, but I’m sure there are also some who feel it might be difficult or are a bit anxious about it. Do you have a message for fellow Mercari members?

@Yuka: Hmm, how about I share one serious message and one more lighthearted message? (laughs) To be blunt, using AI will create a clear distinction between the members “with wings” and those without. But I don’t want people to feel intimidated by that thought. I want to keep things upbeat and fun as I lead the whole company toward leveraging AI.

I think a lot of members who aren’t using AI yet simply feel that they can’t find the time to learn how to use it. Some people call this the J-curve of growth. Since it takes time to get used to new tools, your productivity will probably dip when you first start using AI. You might find this temporary dip a bit challenging, but once you really get into it, your productivity will soar—just like the upward curve of a J.

First things first: download the ChatGPT app to your smartphone and try asking it anything. Even the smallest question is a great place to start! You could also simply send it a greeting, or tell it that you had a rough day to engage in some casual chit-chat. The AI agent will really listen and be there for you. So instead of overthinking things, just start a conversation and see if you can hit it off with AI.