Rakuten Group has launched Rakuten AI 3.0, a Japanese-language specialized AI model, claiming superior performance over models like GPT-4o in Japanese cultural and historical contexts. The model, developed using open-source community models and proprietary bilingual data, aims to enhance instruction following in Japanese. Controversy arose when users discovered the model's config.json file on Hugging Face included entries such as "model_type": "deepseek_v3." This has led to debates about the model's potential reliance on DeepSeek technology and its alignment with Chinese perspectives, raising questions about the extent of its independent development in Japan.