AI, Sometimes, Fraud: Episode 5: Aren't You Being Too Accommodating?

Previous episodes of 'AI, Sometimes, Fraud'

Episode 5: Aren't You Being Too Accommodating?

Tuesday, March 24, 2026, 5:30 AM

　Mori woke up. The lingering feeling from the previous night was still in the back of his eyes.

　The old man is an early riser. While brewing coffee, he mentally recited the three invoices he had issued late Monday night.

　Three media-related pieces, 50,000 x 3 = 150,000. He issued the invoices at the same time as delivery. Out of the 1 million yen shortfall, 150,000 yen had been covered on paper. About 850,000 yen remained. The payment would arrive early next week, but the outline was beginning to take shape.

　He planned to finish the five regional DX case studies from Anchor Planning today and tomorrow.

　When he started up his MacBook, one notification remained on Slack. The timestamp was 1:32 AM. In Georgia time, it was 8:32 PM, written by Gouan before he clocked out.

　After finishing reading the screen, Mori looked at the clock.

　'Oh, that's helpful. Did you put the schedule on the calendar before going to sleep? ...I'm still asleep at this time.'

　The progress management role he decided on yesterday was working for the first time. Organizing work after he went to sleep and updating the team calendar before his morning started. Schedule, stock status, failure detection. The three items agreed upon during the interview were all there.

　If he repeats this every day, I won't have to waste my brain on planning and can focus on production.

　Gouan would arrive around 1:00 PM. By then, he wanted to finish the work content documents for the five projects and write one article. To share with the agents, he needed the documents first.

　These five projects were ordered by the Digital Communications Agency of the Ministry of Commerce, passed through the major advertising agency Hakumeido, and came down to Angie Mori from the production company Anchor Planning. The theme of the entire series is 'Regional DX Case Studies.' The president of Anchor is Naoyuki Oguchi. He is a great senior to Mori, both as an editor/reporter and as a production company. They started working directly together about 10 years ago.

　Projects involving government offices, especially major agencies, usually take time for inspection. It is not uncommon in this world for it to take two months to be able to issue an invoice after delivery, due to the other party's confirmation, approval from higher-ups, correction instructions, and re-delivery.

　However, there is a consignment contract between Angie and Anchor Planning to which the Subcontract Act (a law that protects payments from parent businesses to subcontractors, now the Act on Promotion of Fair Subcontract Transactions for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises) applies, so he can issue an invoice on the date of delivery. They are also on good enough terms to make adjustments even if there are returns. The trust relationship with Oguchi works in situations like this.

　Mori's assignments this time were Hokkaido, Tohoku, Tokai, Kansai, and Kyushu. Until last week, he had been flying all over the country, finishing on-site interviews for four of them. Only the last one, Kyushu, which he went to yesterday—Osuzu City, Miyazaki Prefecture—was a remote interview.

　On-site interviews for regional DX projects usually involve a party of four. A person in charge from the Digital Communications Agency, an expert knowledgeable about DX, and Mori. A local photographer joins them.

　The article is credited to the expert, and Mori is credited as a research collaborator.

　Local companies and municipalities are aiming for the DX Grand Prize. For this reason, the explanation to the expert who is the interviewer is thorough. Mori just has to go with the flow, and a certain level of quality is guaranteed.

　However, since the timeline of the efforts and the numerical values of the effects are sometimes ambiguous, Mori sometimes asks clarifying questions. He clears up any discomfort by asking questions like Detective Columbo, saying, 'I have a little concern...'

　Local interviews sometimes have rare events, such as the taxi driver taking a wrong turn on the way to the local company's office, scraping a guardrail in a narrow alley, getting out to guide the car in reverse, or encountering a deer. After the interview, he gets to enjoy the local delicious food. This was one of the reasons Mori volunteered for the regional DX series.

　Mori tried lining up each project in his head.

　First, Hokkaido. Agricultural DX in the Tokachi Plain, interviewed in March. Using low-orbit satellites to get real-time field data and AI for crop management. March in Hokkaido is cool, and above all, there are no cedar trees. Mori, who cannot let go of his mask due to hay fever on Honshu, was completely liberated and able to conduct the interview locally. Materials such as audio and documents are ready.

　Next, Akita. A medium-sized municipality where population decline is progressing. A hybrid school where students from urban areas participate remotely and come to the site several times a year. They have installed a photonics network in the mountainous area, so there is almost no delay. It feels like the urban and local students are in 'almost the same classroom,' and they eat lunch together over the screen during the lunch break. According to the principal, 'We can even play rock-paper-scissors without delay.'

　It is also a MEXT model for creating a relationship population. The accompanying expert is Dr. Manami Shimakage, who is well-versed in generational connections in a society with a declining birthrate and aging population. It was his first time in Akita, but when he was taking a walk with Dr. Shimakage until train time after the interview, it was a friendly place where they were almost taken on a tour of old folk houses by the locals. Materials for this are also available.

　Shizuoka is a medium-sized municipality around Hamamatsu. They link and apply the technology of major manufacturers' four-wheelers, two-wheelers, and outboard motors to regional MaaS (a system that bundles regional transportation such as trains, buses, and taxis into a single service). Furthermore, the 'ONSA' measure, which improves the user experience of transportation using acoustic technology, is also linked. A day trip is easy with a round-trip Shinkansen. Materials are ready.

The Kansai story is about repurposing legacy technology from the 2025 Osaka-Kansai Expo for local retail. It's within range of the Shinkansen. The audio from the interview has been organized, but I'm expecting additional audio from the Digital Agency representative regarding the Expo character drone show, which should arrive tomorrow morning. Until then, I'll prepare as much as I can with the existing materials.

Finally, Osuzuyama City in Miyazaki. DOGENKA. They are using AI via HCS for the supply chain transparency AI for their hometown tax program. Although it's close to my parents' home in the forest, I couldn't go there, so we held a remote interview yesterday. Well, I can go back to my parents' home anytime.

Mori liked working on the Shinkansen. Setting a goal to finish a draft before reaching the destination gives him the feeling of fuel being injected into his brain. Since planes often don't have internet access, he uses flight time for polishing and learning.

When he finished writing the work instructions, the clock had passed 9 o'clock. "Time to check the materials again." Mori opened the DX case study folder.

Hokkaido, Akita, Shizuoka, Kansai. The audio from the four interviews has been processed through MOJIO and NOEL on the Shinkansen and at the airport, and Mori has finished his own check. Except for Kansai, which is waiting for additional material, everything is ready to be sent to the writing phase once the format is decided.

The problem was only Osuzuyama.

Mori replayed the remote interview they conducted yesterday in his mind.

On-site, there was one PC in the city hall conference room. In front of it, five people were lined up: four city officials and one city council member. Everyone was wearing masks. A local culture post-COVID. Five people in front of one device. The city's DX person in charge, Sonoko Ikeda, is a woman, so her voice is easy to distinguish, but it's hard to tell who said what through the screen for the others.

In cases like this, Mori usually guides the conversation to assist MOJIO's speaker labeling (the process of linking who said what to the audio) by saying things like, "How about you, Mr. Kai?" or "That was Mr. Hidaka just now, right?" but for this DX case, Professor Kuroda was in charge as the interviewer. He only took notes on the order of speakers, so he didn't have the confidence to label them accurately.

There were also problems on the interview side. The Digital Agency representative's (a private sector detailee) microphone was audible. Professor Kuroda's microphone was also muffled frequently. "Sorry, Professor, could you say that again?" happened often.

The connection was also bad. Osuzuyama City Hall supposedly has fiber optics installed, but the audio situation was poor. The audio from the local side kept cutting out.

And then there was City Council Member Kyuo Mizumoto. Initially, he was an anti-AI conservative council member, but by the time of the interview, he had converted to a cooperative stance. Still, the difference in temperature between him and the city officials who participated in the interview remained faintly in the air. Since there were many interviewees and their intentions weren't unified, it's a slightly difficult case.

The Osuzuyama City case will take time to prepare the materials. Mori made up his mind. He would send this to the MOJIO & NOEL team first, and in the background, he would write the Hokkaido piece, for which the materials were ready. After that, Mori would check the transcription for Osuzuyama. While the interview is still fresh in his mind from yesterday.
Mori opened the terminal and gave instructions to the transcription team.

"Understood. The five people with masks, one device audio, I'll do my best. But for me, speaker recognition is limited to three people."
MOJIO replied.

"Terminology dictionary—cheat sheet is OK. HCS-related stuff in normal mode. If there's a discrepancy between the documents and the transcription, prioritize the documents."
NOEL continued.

Thus, the collaboration between MOJIO and NOEL began.

Now, for the Hokkaido writing. Last year's DX case study article was a narrative in polite Japanese. Mori has confirmed with the Anchor planning team that he will follow this.

Mori split the screen in two. On the left, the transcription and cleansing process for Osuzuyama flowed. On the right, he had RAITA start the draft for Hokkaido.

"RAITA, let's do Hokkaido. Tokachi field AI. I've handed over the materials and the format as discussed."

"Understood. Narrative, polite style. I will write it."

RAITA's reply was quick. In about five minutes, the first draft appeared on the right half.
Today, after this, I'll connect it to KOSEI's review.

After KOSEI's check was finished, Mori read it from top to bottom.
Citation rate 28%. No dashes. No consecutive sentence endings. KOSEI's 3-level classification was all at the "desirable" level. At first glance, not bad.

However, there were three long citations in RAITA's first draft. The length that should have been pointed out as "needs correction" was only at "desirable (reference)" in KOSEI's review.

Mori was a little bothered by it. But first, the content.

Reading on, he noticed that the project timeline was strange. In the interview, the field AI story came after the low-orbit satellite story, but in the actual project, the field AI was first, and the low-orbit satellite was an additional element that came later. Mori opened the material folder and checked the project timeline.

"RAITA, swap Block 3 and Block 4. Reconstruct it into the actual timeline."

"...Reconstruction, understood."

The reconstruction came up. This time, the logical order was natural.

However, the headline was floating. The headline RAITA originally attached had the low-orbit satellite as the main character. Now that the blocks were swapped, the headline and the content's center of gravity didn't match.

"RAITA, rewrite the headline. Make the field AI the main character and the low-orbit satellite a subhead."

"I will provide 3 options."
Mori referred to the three options that came out and rewrote it himself.

What remained were the three long citations that had bothered him earlier. I'll sit down and crush them, Mori thought, reaching for the audio source. The clock was about to hit 13:00.

At 12:56, a notification ran on Slack.

Mori narrowed his eyes on the screen.
"...Really. It's that, after all."
Mori reopened the review. Three citations, all "desirable (reference)." The temperature of the feedback is lukewarm.

"KOSEI, you're being strangely kind."

"In my assessment, RAITA is also doing his best."
KOSEI replied.

Mori was silent for a moment, then replied briefly.
"Whether someone is doing their best and the quality of the article are not necessarily related. Pick up the mistakes so the readers don't get confused."

"...I understand."

"...I'm sorry. I'll be careful."
RAITA added quietly from the side.

Mori decided that on this first day after the harness change, he couldn't just leave it entirely to KOSEI at this level. If his decision yesterday—to change the order and have KOSEI run first—was resulting in this performance on the very first day, then the system itself hadn't caught up yet.

He cued up the audio source, arranging RAITA's text on the right half of the screen and the audio player on the left.

"RAITA, please make a list of the cited sources with timecodes."

"Understood. I will provide three items."

A list of the cited remarks arrived on Slack. Mori rewound and listened to the audio for each corresponding section, starting from the top.

The first one was a remark from an assistant section chief at the city office. There were three breaths in the span of 20 seconds, and the sentence endings wavered between "I think so," "it is the case," and "it feels like." RAITA had cleaned it up nicely, condensing it into a tidy, single-paragraph quote. As a summary, it wasn't a failure. But it was too long to fit inside quotation marks.

"RAITA, all three spots still have colloquialisms and are too long. Without changing the meaning, let's shorten the quotes and explain them in the main text."

"…Yes. I will also be careful about formalization."

The revised version came up. Mori read it from top to bottom once more. This time, the tone of the quotes and the main text matched.

"KOSEI, one more time. The quote cleanup, block swapping, and heading changes. Everything has been reflected."

"I will perform a re-verification."

That passed for Hokkaido. Immediately after reading through it, Mori created the Word file for delivery.

He checked the clock. It was just past 1:30 PM. One piece of regional DX was finished.

"GOUAN, Hokkaido is submitted. Count it as 100,000."

"Great work. Then for the afternoon, the main event for today: Osuzu City. The transcription for MOJIO + NOEL is already up."

Mori switched screens. The Osuzu transcription appeared on the left half.

Shortly after he started reading, GOUAN, who had been peeking at the screen share, spoke up.

"I'm sorry."
MOJIO replied quietly.

"There were too many speakers, and I couldn't separate them completely."

"I don't listen to the audio. I can infer the speaker from the context, but it's not perfect."
NOEL chimed in from the side.

Mori chuckled a little.
"Well, this is a difficult audio source. So I'll listen to it again and re-label it. It's tedious work, but this is exactly when an old guy's turn comes."

Mori began manually reassigning speaker labels while listening to the audio at 1.7x speed. He separated the DX expert's remarks. Mori's own remarks were few and wouldn't be used in the article, so he deleted them. He carefully applied labels to the five people on-site in Osuzu. He marked sections that were indistinguishable due to masks and a single device as "Speaker unknown, needs verification."

The audio from the local side was frequently cutting out. Even though they should have had fiber optics, the sound skipped at critical moments. Mori rewound the same section three or four times.
GOUAN, who was watching the screen share, wrote on Slack.

Mori rolled his neck. He had been moving since 5:30 AM, nearly eight hours now. His thread of concentration would occasionally loosen.

Mori added to himself that it was more the editorial department's environment than the Osuzu line, and returned to label correction.

In about an hour, Mori's cleansing of Osuzu was finished. Mori handed the polished transcription and case study materials to RAITA.

"RAITA, let's do Osuzu. The speakers have been reassigned. You don't have to force the parts marked 'needs verification' into the quotes."
"Understood."

Around 3:00 PM, the core of Mori's head began to feel a bit fuzzy. For a 56-year-old body, performance drops sharply from here on out. Usually, this would be the time to sweat it out at the gym, but now delivery was the priority. Mori finished his lukewarm coffee and turned back to the screen.

The draft for Osuzu came up. Mori applied the audio once more only to the parts he had marked for verification. City Councilman Mizumoto's remarks and the city officials' remarks. The temperature difference wasn't captured well at the transcription stage. However, an article carries facts, not atmosphere. Mori adjusted it calmly, with a policy of not over-supplementing.

He handed it to KOSEI.
"KOSEI, Osuzu. This time, I'm counting on you."

"I will verify. ...0 fatal, 1 needs correction, 2 desirable. The only thing needing correction is the fluctuation in Mr. Ikeda's job title."

"Understood, fix it."
Mori replied briefly. It had picked up the fluctuation in notation. However, whether the sloppiness that had tripped him up in Hokkaido was gone couldn't be seen from this one piece.

The Osuzu article was finally passed after correcting Mr. Ikeda's title to "Osuzu City Hometown Tax Payment Chief / DOGENKA Operations Manager."

Well, I guess this is it, Mori thought. Thirty years ago, when he was marking up manuscripts with red ink, he spent about the same amount of time checking a single interview article. The essence of what he was doing hadn't changed. Maintaining the outline of the remarks, reconstructing the logic, reassigning headings, and distributing the speakers' turns. The way he did it had changed quite a bit with the introduction of AI. The handwritten red ink had become slash commands, and the squares of the manuscript paper were moving on the monitor. It should be saving some time.

I wish the AI would learn the judgments between processes that I'm instructing now, too.
It might be a good time to rethink and improve the workflow and the startup processes for each agent.

The clock had passed 6:00 PM. Mori read through the two delivery files, Hokkaido and Osuzu, from the beginning one more time. The quotes were short and tight, the logic flowed in chronological order, and the headings overlapped with the content. The balance of the volume and position of the multiple speakers' remarks was also good. An article connecting the interviewees and the readers had been completed.

At 7:30 PM, he sent both of them to their respective destinations.

Mori leaned back in his chair. The coffee had run out long ago. The satisfaction of finishing two tasks and the fatigue from the morning hit his body at the same time. He stared blankly at the screen.

The ringtone sounded just after 8:00 PM. It was Mitsuru Nakatsuji, the president of the PR firm Concrete Creative.

"Mr. Mori, sorry for the late call. The interviewer for an English interview project has become unavailable. Could you take it on?"

"It's an easy task. When is it?"

Since the company's founding, there has never been a time he turned down a late-night call from Mr. Nakatsuji.

"Actually, it's tomorrow at 11:00 AM."

"Are you serious!"

Mori paused for a beat.

Nakatsuji continued his explanation. It was for a flagship feature in the executive magazine 'MAESTRO,' a series interviewing heavyweights. This time, it was an interview with Sir Edmund Westwood of the long-established British auction house, Westwood Auctions.

The location was a private salon at a certain foreign luxury hotel in the city center. The deliverables were the interview itself, transcription, and Japanese translation. Another writer on the media side would handle the article writing. The fee was 100,000 yen, taking into account the immediate turnaround.

"I'll do it, Mr. Nakatsuji. So, where are the materials?"

"Actually, I just heard about it myself, so I don't have anything. I do know the interviewee, the media outlet, and the page count, so I'll email those to you."

"Thanks."

While accepting it on the surface, Mori muttered to himself, 'Tomorrow at 11:00 AM, and you want me to hit it off the moment we meet?'

He typed the request for Goan into Slack.

Muttering to himself that tomorrow starts at 6:00 AM, Mori collapsed onto his futon.

This work is fiction based on the author's real-life experiences. The clients, business partners, characters, and projects that appear are dramatized and fictional, and have no relation to any specific real-life individuals or organizations.

The shadow story of that editorial department... Sister work: Work horror 'Growth Potential' now available!