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In May 2016, the Dunhuang Research Academy launched the Digital Dunhuang (数字敦煌) online resource library, making 360-degree virtual panoramic tours of thirty classic caves spanning ten dynasties freely accessible to the public for the first time. This platform, built on years of high-resolution digitization work at the Mogao Caves site in Gansu, established Dunhuang as China's leading model for digital cultural heritage and created the institutional foundations that would later anchor the province's most consequential virtual character projects.
By the close of 2017, more than 180 caves had been digitized and incorporated into the platform. In September 2017, an English-language version of the Digital Dunhuang interface went live, extending the virtual heritage experience to international audiences. In December 2017, the Dunhuang Research Academy and Tencent (腾讯) formalized a strategic technology and cultural partnership that would prove to be the single most important catalyst for embodied virtual character development in Gansu across the following decade.
The Tencent–Dunhuang collaboration produced its first large-scale interactive result in June 2018, when the Digital Patron (数字供养人) experience attracted more than one million user engagements within two hours of launch. In September 2018, the partnership yielded a landmark cultural crossover with the release of a Meet Flying Apsara (遇见飞天) character skin for the mobile game Honor of Kings (王者荣耀). Co-developed over six months through thirty-seven design iterations and drawing directly on Mogao Caves iconography, the skin was acquired by forty million players worldwide, introducing Dunhuang's celestial apsara figures to a mass global audience as fully realized synthetic virtual characters.
In February 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdown, the partnership launched Cloud Tour Dunhuang (云游敦煌), a WeChat mini-program that attracted more than one million unique users within its first ten days and positioned the flying apsara as an interactive digital character accessible from anywhere. In April 2020, a second Honor of Kings skin — the Nine-Colored Deer (九色鹿), also rooted in Mogao Caves iconography — was released, extending the Dunhuang virtual character franchise further into the gaming sphere.
In January 2021, China Gansu Network (中国甘肃网) deployed an AI virtual anchor named Xiao Su (小肃) to cover the Gansu Provincial Two Sessions political meetings, marking the first confirmed appearance of a virtual broadcast anchor in the province's media landscape. In October 2021, the Mogao Caves scenic area deployed what was documented as China's first augmented reality virtual characters at a UNESCO World Heritage site. Using Huawei Cyberverse (华为河图) technology, visitors could encounter AR flying apsara figures and a virtual Nine-Colored Deer appearing within the physical environment of the caves — an early instance of spatially embodied virtual beings deployed at a Gansu cultural venue. By 2022, Cloud Tour Dunhuang had accumulated ten million registered users.
In April 2022, the virtual influencer Tianyu (天妤) debuted on Douyin, gaining 300,000 followers within three days and eventually surpassing 5.5 million fans. Tianyu was created by the Shanghai- and Shenzhen-based studio Tianyu Digital Science (天娱数科) in collaboration with the Dunhuang Costume Culture Research Center, drawing extensively on Gansu's Dunhuang cultural IP while remaining a commercial virtual influencer conceived, operated, and managed entirely by entities external to the province. Also in April 2022, iFLYTEK (科大讯飞) established its wholly owned Gansu subsidiary, iFLYTEK Zhihui Chao Nao Gansu Artificial Intelligence Technology Co., Ltd. (讯飞智慧超脑（甘肃）人工智能科技有限公司), in Lanzhou with registered capital of fifty million yuan, marking the first major national AI company to create a dedicated Gansu-specific entity for regional AI deployment.
In June 2022, the Dunhuang Research Academy and Tencent unveiled Jiayao (伽瑶), the first official Digital Dunhuang Cultural Ambassador and the most internationally recognized digital human associated with Gansu. Inspired by the mythical Kalavinka bird depicted on the ceiling of Mogao Cave 360, Jiayao is a motion-captured female virtual figure capable of performing Dunhuang dance forms, serving as a virtual guide within the Cloud Tour Dunhuang mini-program, and representing the Dunhuang cultural brand at exhibitions and ceremonies nationwide. She was built using game-engine technology with physically based rendering and global dynamic lighting, and has appeared at events including the Dunhuang Mid-Autumn Night program and the China Network Audiovisual Annual Ceremony — a deployment rooted in Gansu and associated with a Gansu cultural institution, though executed with external technology and production resources.
In September 2023, two significant deployments unfolded in the province. The government of Lintao County in Dingxi City partnered with Baidu Intelligent Cloud (百度智能云) to create Diaochan (貂蝉), a three-dimensional intelligent digital human modeled after the legendary historical beauty associated with Lintao. Built on Baidu's Wenxin large language model via the Xilinx digital human platform, Diaochan was unveiled at the Baidu Cloud Intelligence Conference in early September 2023 and then locally launched at the Sixth Majiayao Culture Festival later that month in Lintao. Her initial operational deployment was in smart water management for what was described as Gansu's first county-level intelligent water platform, with subsequent plans for tourism promotion and e-commerce extending her role as a synthetic character representing local cultural identity. Also in September 2023, the Seeking Dunhuang (寻境敦煌) VR experience launched at the Mogao Caves, offering a one-to-one, high-precision three-dimensional reconstruction of Cave 285 with a virtual guide character named Moling (摩灵) and more than forty interactive mural deity figures rendered with over one hundred million polygons using game-engine technology; the experience was made available both at the Mogao Caves site in Gansu and through an online version. Around this same period, China Telecom's data center in Qingyang completed the first phase of its construction under the national East Data West Computing (东数西算) initiative, providing foundational computing infrastructure that would support subsequent AI and digital human deployments across the region.
In October 2023, Gansu animation designer Wang Shuyang (王舒旸) won first place in the public group digital track at the inaugural Cultural Tourism China Metaverse Innovation Competition, organized by China Culture Media Group, with a digital character work titled Weak Water (弱水). The result was described as Gansu's most significant competitive achievement in digital human design to that date.
In January 2024, Gansu Provincial Broadcasting TV deployed second-generation AI virtual anchors for its provincial Two Sessions coverage, broadcasting under the banner "两会AI新闻眼" within the flagship Gansu News program. In February 2024, on the occasion of the Lantern Festival, the Zhangye Grand Buddha Temple launched a digital guide character named Yún Zhuó (云灼), a Western Xia Tangut princess figure developed for the Zhangye deployment by Digital Xusheng Beijing (数字序升（北京）) as part of Tencent's Explore Origins Plan (探元计划); the character was designed to serve as an interactive historical guide for visitors to the temple site in Gansu's Zhangye City.
In April 2024, the Lintao County Convergence Media Center launched four AI virtual anchors, becoming the first county-level media center in Gansu to deploy AI digital human broadcasters as regular hosts of news and programming including Lintao News. In July 2024, Lanzhou hosted the Digital Cultural Tourism Conference organized by the Gansu Provincial Culture and Tourism Department and China Telecom Gansu (中国电信甘肃), where demonstrations included AI-guided virtual tours, extended reality metaverse glasses, and a Star Dawn cultural tourism large model. That same month, at the Thirtieth Lanzhou Investment and Trade Fair, the Qingyang city pavilion featured digital human interactive displays alongside drone and virtual reality experiences for attending delegates and investors. Also in July 2024, Lanzhou University of Finance and Economics completed procurement of an AI Virtual Digital Human Interactive System for Ideological and Political Education valued at 274,500 yuan, awarded to local technology firm Gansu Yusi Technology Development Co., Ltd. (甘肃聿肃科技发展有限公司), a Lanzhou-based startup that had emerged as one of the few locally rooted providers of digital human system integration in the province.
In September 2024, Gansu's provincial East-West Computing Innovation Contest included AI Virtual Digital Human Development as one of three specialized competition tracks, reflecting the province's institutional recognition of digital human capability as a distinct technical field. Around this time, the Qingyang City Convergence Media Center established its own internal digital human research and development team, beginning construction of its next-generation virtual broadcaster initiative. By September 2024, China Telecom's original Qingyang data center had reached full rack capacity of approximately 1,664 units.
In October 2024, construction began in Qingyang on a new intelligent computing center backed by investment of 4.78 billion yuan, substantially expanding the province's AI infrastructure capacity. By this period, total computing capacity across multiple telecom operators in Qingyang had reached approximately 34,000 petaflops. In November 2024, the Gansu Provincial People's Congress Standing Committee issued a formal decision on accelerating digital government, explicitly citing the metaverse as a frontier technology designated for provincial development, a policy signal that prefigured more direct references to digital humans in subsequent official documents.
In December 2024, China Mobile Gansu (中国移动甘肃) and China Unicom Gansu (中国联通甘肃), both operating in Qingyang, signed digital human cooperation agreements, diversifying the telecommunications base supporting virtual character development across the province. Also in December 2024, the Qingyang City Convergence Media Center launched seven digital human anchors modeled on existing real-life television hosts from the center, with a character named Xiaoli (小丽) making her debut appearance at the China Computing Valley Digital Industry Development Conference — marking Qingyang's transition from a city primarily known for computing infrastructure into one actively producing and deploying its own digital human media assets.
In January 2025, Jiayuguan City Library (嘉峪关市图书馆) introduced an AI librarian named Xiao Xiongguan (小雄关), a voice-activated humanlike virtual assistant providing consultation, book recommendations, and reading guidance to library users through an embodied digital character interface. That same month, a Lanzhou municipal employment event featured digital human anchors as part of the city's "百名人社局长直播带岗" program, in which bureau-level officials and virtual co-hosts jointly participated in live-streamed job recruitment sessions, extending AI virtual anchor deployment into public employment services.
In February 2025, the PLA Joint Logistics Support Force 940 Hospital (联勤保障部队第九四〇医院) in Lanzhou deployed the DeepSeek R1-70B large language model locally, becoming the first medical institution in Gansu to integrate DeepSeek into its clinical information systems. That same month, the Dunhuang municipal government integrated DeepSeek into its unified government services platform, which was recognized as the first intelligent government platform of its kind in Gansu by state media including Xinhua Gansu and Sina Finance.
In March 2025, Gansu Provincial Broadcasting TV deployed an AI anchor named Longfei (龙飞) for its National Two Sessions coverage, producing more than one thousand reports that accumulated a combined 5.3 billion views across platforms — demonstrating the extent to which AI virtual anchors had become an established pillar of Gansu's broadcast media infrastructure in the four years since Xiao Su's debut. Also in March 2025, officials from Qingyang city traveled to the headquarters of Yitian Intelligence (亿田智能) in Zhejiang province for a cooperation visit focused on intelligent computing development; Yitian's subsidiary Yisuan Intelligence (亿算智能) operated a smart computing center in Qingyang, making the visit an outbound engagement from Gansu rather than an inbound Zhejiang presence in the province.
In April 2025, the AI digital human consultant named I Dunhuang (I敦煌) went live on the Dunhuang government services platform, processing more than five hundred daily consultations across 5,050 service items drawn from fifty-two municipal departments — the most comprehensive digital human deployment in Gansu's government services sector to that point. Also in April 2025, the Tianshui Museum (天水博物馆) introduced a digital human docent system incorporating DeepSeek for cultural heritage interpretation, extending AI-embodied virtual guides into Gansu's formal museum sector for the first time.
In May 2025, China Telecom Gansu held its annual technology conference featuring forty-four exhibition areas showcasing AI and computing applications across the province's digital infrastructure ecosystem. During the same period, Gansu New Generation Network Technology Co., Ltd. (甘肃新一代网络科技有限公司), a Lanzhou-based firm that had developed its own AI digital human system, was reported to be serving more than three hundred local enterprises across sectors including manufacturing, foreign trade, and food services — one of the few Gansu-indigenous companies to have achieved meaningful commercial scale in digital human system provision. Also active in 2025, Silky Brahma Gansu Communications Technology Co., Ltd. (丝路梵天（甘肃）通信技术有限公司) developed a VR experience titled Star Seeking 1340 (寻星1340), which was selected by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology as a national 2025 Metaverse Typical Case — one of the rare instances of a Gansu-domiciled company receiving national-level recognition for a virtual experience product.
In January 2026, the Gansu Provincial Government issued its Deep Implementation of the "AI+" Action Plan (甘政发〔2026〕1号), the first provincial policy document in Gansu to formally reference digital humans (数字人) by name alongside natural persons and intelligent robots in its public safety governance framework. The plan signaled official provincial intent to treat digital humans as a recognized and regulated category of AI-driven entity, closing a decade in which Gansu had moved from digitizing cave murals to deploying virtual anchors, cultural ambassadors, museum docents, government consultants, and library assistants across a widening range of public-facing contexts — even as the province remained, in technological terms, a consumer rather than a primary producer of the digital human systems it deployed.
[Mar 2026]