Hunan Digital Human Timeline

In October 2016, Hunan Provincial Party Secretary Du Jiahao proposed the concept of Malanshan Video Cultural and Creative Industrial Park (马栏山视频文创产业园) during a site visit to the Kaifu District of Changsha, articulating the vision with the phrase "North has Zhongguancun, South has Malanshan." The Hunan Provincial Development and Reform Commission formally approved the park in September 2017, and in February 2017, Changsha Qianbo Information Technology Co., Ltd. (长沙千博信息技术有限公司) was founded in Changsha's Lusong district. The company was led by Professor Gao Chunming of Hunan University's School of Information Science and Engineering and concentrated its early work on computational sign-language technology built around a proprietary cloud platform.

Malanshan Park was officially inaugurated in December 2017, with groundbreaking ceremonies for the Mango TV headquarters building and the Zhongguang Tianze headquarters among the events marking the opening. The park's planning area spans 15.75 square kilometers with a core zone of five square kilometers, and it was designed from inception as a cluster for audio-video production, digital media, and emerging content technology. During this period, Qianbo Information Technology was developing what it called the Qianyu platform, an early sign-language rendering system that would subsequently evolve into a sequence of more capable virtual human products. In the second half of 2019, Qianbo relocated its operations into Malanshan Park, expanding from its original focus on education technology into broadcast and government services and advancing its sign-language product toward a third-generation architecture.

In June 2020, Changsha Broadcasting and Television Station (长沙市广播电视台) activated an AI sign-language virtual translator in the live broadcast of its flagship news program "Changsha News," marking what was recognized as the first deployment of AI sign-language translation in a live news broadcast by a city-level television station in China. The system, developed by Qianbo, used National Standard Sign Language and combined rendered facial expressions and lip movements with real-time conversion of news text and speech. This deployment established Hunan as an early mover in accessibility-oriented virtual human applications within the broadcast sector. In September 2020, President Xi Jinping visited Malanshan Park as part of an inspection tour of Hunan and observed the AI sign-language broadcast system in operation, offering positive recognition and describing the cultural industry as a sunrise sector.

In November 2020, a Malanshan-based VR company, Changsha Hongda Wei'ai (长沙宏达威爱), partnered with Sany Heavy Truck (三一重卡) to create a branded digital IP character called Ka Sheng (卡圣) for a commercial livestream event called the Global Machine Purchase Carnival Night. The event contributed to nearly ten billion RMB in transactions and represented an early example of a purpose-built digital character deployed in the context of e-commerce livestreaming in Hunan.

In September 2021, Mango TV's Innovation Research Institute unveiled its hyperrealistic 3D virtual host YAOYAO at the second Malanshan Cup International Audio-Video Algorithm Competition awards ceremony, held as part of the 2021 World Computing Conference in Changsha. YAOYAO co-hosted the ceremony alongside real presenter Qi Sijun and was constructed using scans of more than 100 million Asian faces combined with Mango TV's proprietary light-field technology and input from more than 100 professional cameras arranged for 360-degree motion capture. In October 2021, Hunan Satellite TV officially announced its digital host Xiao Yang (小漾), whose name derives from the English word "young." Created over more than three months by a team of over thirty digital artists and engineers, Xiao Yang was jointly developed by the 5G High-New Video Multi-Scenario Application NRTA Key Laboratory and Hunan Mango Huanshi Technology Co., Ltd. (湖南芒果幻视科技有限公司), and she was positioned as an intern host for the forthcoming variety program "Hello Saturday," which was replacing the long-running "Happy Camp" in Hunan Satellite TV's Saturday evening slot.

In January 2022, Xiao Yang made her on-air debut during the premiere episode of "Hello Saturday" (《你好星期六》), which aired at 20:10 on Hunan Satellite TV with veteran host He Jiong alongside newly signed hosts Feng Xi, Cui Lei, and Yuan Shuai. Beijing Virtual DotPoint Technology (北京虚拟动点科技有限公司), a subsidiary of Leyard Group (利亚德), provided motion capture services for the production using 34 OptiTrack cameras running Motive software, though the development of Xiao Yang herself was the work of the Mango Huanshi team. The partnership between Huawei Cloud's MetaStudio platform and Hunan TV for supporting Xiao Yang — including AI voice driving and offline rendering acceleration — was established from around this same period and continued as an ongoing arrangement.

In June 2022, Mango Phantom City (芒果幻城), a VR-based metaverse social platform, launched simultaneously on the PICO, iQIYI Qiyu VR, and NOLO VR platforms. The platform was developed by Hunan Mango Huanshi Technology and offered virtual social interaction, VR games, virtual concerts, and virtual real estate experiences. Its creation followed directly from Hunan Broadcasting Group Chairman Zhang Huali's November 2021 identification of a Mango Metaverse as one of seven strategic priorities for the group. In approximately August 2022, Mango TV's Innovation Research Institute and Tencent Cloud jointly launched a Virtual Human Live Interactive Platform capable of supporting immersive interactions with up to one thousand simultaneous users at latencies of sixty to eighty milliseconds and at up to 8K visual quality, combining Mango TV's virtual space technology with Tencent Cloud's real-time cloud rendering infrastructure.

In September 2022, Qianbo Information Technology held its International Sign Language Day seminar at Malanshan Yuehu Cultural Creative Town in Changsha, welcoming more than thirty hearing-impaired participants and demonstrating the third-generation sign-language digital human Qianyan (千言). Later that same month, Qianyan performed at Beijing Shanyuan Bookhouse as part of an event marking the International Day of the Deaf, an occasion organized outside Hunan but involving Qianbo's Changsha-developed system. In October 2022, Qianyan was deployed at the news center of the 20th CPC National Congress in Beijing to provide interactive sign-language translation services; this deployment was jointly produced by the Malanshan Computing Media Research Institute, Qianbo Information, and Digital Xusheng (Beijing) Technology (数字栩生（北京）科技有限公司).

In November 2022, the national-style virtual character Orange Shuangshuang (橙双双) debuted via a livestream on the Kuaishou platform. She was introduced as the first member of Qi Xian Nü (柒仙女), presented as China's first national-style virtual family, and was produced through a collaboration among Hunan Xiaoxiang Interactive Entertainment Media (潇影互动娱乐传媒), Hunan Mango Huanshi Technology, and the 5G NRTA Key Laboratory. Also in November 2022, Xiao Yang appeared at the opening ceremony of the first Hunan Tourism Development Conference, extending her public role beyond the entertainment format into provincial promotional activities. In December 2022, Xiao Yang appeared on Hunan Satellite TV's New Year's Eve concert marking the transition into 2023.

Across the late December 2022 to early January 2023 window, Hunan's cultural tourism digital human Xiang Xiaomei (湘小妹) appeared at the 18th China Shenzhen International Cultural Industry Expo, an event held in Shenzhen. The character promoted Hunan's five tourism identities — the Zhangjiajie natural scenery, the Shaoshan red heritage, Changsha urban leisure, Nanyue Hengshan historical culture, and Chengtoushan agricultural heritage — using curved LED glasses-free 3D display technology and 3D stereoscopic programming.

In approximately June 2023, Mango Super Media disclosed that its intelligent guide virtual human Zhen Cheng (甄诚) had been placed into active service across multiple scenarios alongside YAOYAO, adding a second named digital human to the Mango TV operational portfolio. In July 2023, the China New Media Conference "Malanshan Time" event, themed around digital and real-world symbiosis and smart creation, was held in Changsha. Attendees experienced immersive glasses-free 3D digital human interaction devices and metaverse space demonstrations, with Mango TV and Huawei Cloud presenting applications of their respective AI and generative content platforms, including the Pangu large model.

In August 2023, the second Qianbo AI Sign-Language Symposium was held at Malanshan Yuehu Cultural Creative Town, gathering more than twenty sign-language specialists including the president of the Hunan Provincial Deaf Association for a formal product evaluation session. In October 2023, the digital human Xiao Mo (小墨) from Huasheng Online (华声在线) served in the role of "wonderful recommender" at the fifth Postal Cup Hunan Daily Reading Aloud activity launch, held in the New Hunan Building in Changsha. The event simultaneously recognized the winners of the 2022 edition and launched the fifth edition, with Xiao Mo functioning as a named digital presenter for the occasion. In early December 2023, Qianbo delivered its third-generation virtual sign-language digital human Xinyu (心语) to the Changsha News program at Changsha Broadcasting and Television Station, replacing the 2020-era prototype with a system built on Unreal Engine rendering, high-precision motion capture, cinema-grade 4K output, and a real person as the physical template for the character's appearance and movement.

In January 2024, the Digital Han Life (数字汉生活) IP brand was formally launched at a ceremony held at Malanshan Park, representing a collaboration among Hunan Museum (湖南省博物馆), the Malanshan Cultural Digitalization Innovation Center, and Hunan Zhiliao Youth Culture Co., Ltd. (湖南智了青年文化有限公司). For the first time, Hunan Museum offered free dual authorization of its brand and access to the Mawangdui Digital Resource Library to two university design departments and twelve enterprises, with more than thirty creative teams signing agreements to develop content across seven dimensions of Western Han culture. The initiative opened a pathway for digital human representations of historical figures from the Mawangdui collection, including the Lady Xin Zhui, to be developed as a suite of connected cultural IP products.

In March 2024, AI director Ai Mang (爱芒, also rendered AIM) was officially unveiled by Hunan Satellite TV and Mango TV alongside the announcement of the variety program "We Three" (《我们仨》), which was described as China's first television show directed by an AI director. Ai Mang's facial appearance was synthesized from the faces of Hunan Satellite TV and Mango TV producers, and the character's voice was composed from the voices of directors born after 1995 and 2000. An advance planning episode aired on Mango TV in March 2024, and regular episodes began airing at 22:00 on Hunan Satellite TV later the same month, running for twelve episodes with permanent guests Guo Qilin, Mao Buyi, and Wei Daxun. The show was produced by Wang Tian Studio of Hunan Satellite TV.

In May 2024, Hunan Museum released the Xin Zhui (辛追夫人) 3D digital human, with Xinhua publishing an exclusive preview report on May 17 and formal public release on May 18. Two versions were created: one depicting Lady Xin Zhui at approximately age thirty-five in a seated full-body form, and another depicting her at approximately age fifty as a head portrait. The cranial-facial reconstruction underpinning the digital human was led by forensic specialist Yuan Zhongbiao and was based on X-ray head scans conducted in the 1970s. The character was created by Changsha Digital Whale Technology Co., Ltd. (长沙数字鲸鱼科技有限公司) using ultra-realistic digital human modeling at 0.01 millimeter precision with motion capture data drawn from real human movement. On May 20, the Xin Zhui 3D digital human was deployed as a dynamic animation on electronic display screens at Wenchangge Metro Station (文昌阁站) in Changsha, with the installation planned to run through mid-June. Also in May 2024, Hunan's exhibit at the 20th China Shenzhen International Cultural Industries Fair, held in Shenzhen, featured demonstrations of Ai Mang in its director role, digital puppet virtual interactive dancing, and mixed reality space experiences, bringing several of the province's recent digital human developments to a national industry audience.

In July 2024, a digital recreation of Song Dynasty Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi (朱熹) was unveiled at the Changsha Lantianxin Digital Intelligence Huxiang Museum (长沙揽天心数智湖湘馆), located near Tianxin Pavilion in Changsha. The AI-powered interactive digital human was created by a Hunan University team led by Professor Chen Hao, with institutional links to the National Supercomputing Center in Changsha, and was designed to engage museum visitors in dialogue about Neo-Confucian philosophy. The deployment represented a second significant instance of Hunan's emerging pattern of using AI digital humans to embody historical scholars and cultural figures in museum and heritage settings.

In September 2024, two major events took place at the Internet Yuelu Summit held in Changsha. On September 9, the AI 3D promotional character Xiao Lu (小麓) debuted as the summit's first AI three-dimensional character in the event's eleven-year history, presenting the Global R&D Center City one-year achievement report on the Yuelu Forum main stage. The character's design was provided by Shenman Culture (神漫文化), while Wondershare Technology (万兴科技) contributed the AI production backbone using its proprietary Tianmu (天幕) large model, which integrates a large language model with computer graphics, speech recognition and synthesis, and lip-synchronization technology. Wondershare Technology maintains its headquarters at Zhongdian Software Park in Hunan Xiangjiang New Area, Changsha, and its digital human portfolio includes the Wondershare Virbo (万兴播爆) AI-powered video marketing tool, which generates realistic digital human presenters from text inputs and supports more than three hundred voice options and more than three hundred avatars with custom cloning capability, as well as a virtual avatar feature in its DemoCreator (万兴录演) screen capture product. The company is constructing an approximately one hundred thousand square meter industrial park called Wondershare Creative World in Changsha.

Also in September 2024, Youth Dongzhou Island (青春东洲岛) officially opened in Hengyang, coinciding with the third Hunan Tourism Development Conference. The project, developed through a joint venture between the Hengyang Municipal Government and Hunan ETV Media (湖南电广传媒股份有限公司) with a total investment of 1.2 billion RMB, features the Digital Chuanshan Academy (数字船山书院), where the philosopher Wang Fuzhi (王夫之) appears as an interactive AI digital human capable of delivering lectures and engaging visitors in conversation. The project was built in seventy-one days and was described as China's only academy entirely packaged, constructed, and operated through digital technology, incorporating augmented reality, virtual reality, and AI. By June 2025, the site had received nearly 4.5 million visitors. NetEase Changsha Digital Industry Center also opened at Malanshan Park in September 2024, occupying 12,900 square meters in its initial phase and housing an anime and game art base, a game operations incubation facility, and an AIGC Innovation Center.

In November 2024, the National Radio and Television Administration issued the industry standard GY/T 411-2024 covering digital virtual human technical requirements. Hunan Mango Wuji Technology Co., Ltd. (湖南芒果无际科技有限公司) participated in the drafting of this national standard, marking formal recognition of Hunan's broadcasting ecosystem as a contributor to national policy-setting in the virtual human field.

In January 2025, the National Intellectual Property Office disclosed a patent application from Wondershare Technology Hunan (万兴科技（湖南）有限公司) for an image cartoonization generation method, applied in September 2024, which falls within the company's broader digital human technology portfolio encompassing its lip-driving video translation capabilities. Also in January 2025, YY Live (YY直播) held its 2024 Annual Summit in Changsha, at which it launched its first service-type AI companion digital human, Ling'er (灵儿). The character operates across more than six thousand live rooms, serves more than one million users daily, and was reported to have increased interaction rates by thirty percent following deployment.

In February 2025, the Hunan Provincial Government issued the Green Smart Computing Industry Development Plan covering 2025 through 2030, which explicitly designated digital humans as one of four cloud-based digital content production lines to be developed as strategic priorities alongside enterprise three-dimensional spaces, film industrialization, and digital twins. This policy document provided formal provincial endorsement for a digital human industry whose commercial foundations had been constructed largely by Mango TV, Qianbo Information, and Wondershare across the preceding five years, and it was issued in the context of a provincial audio-video industry valued at 2,500 billion RMB in 2024. Mango TV's parent operating entity, Hunan Happy Sunshine Interactive Entertainment Media Co., Ltd. (湖南快乐阳光互动娱乐传媒有限公司), was also granted a patent in February 2025 covering a method and device for the real-time generation of digital characters, applicable to gaming, animation, VR and AR environments, virtual hosting, and brand avatar applications. By this period, Mango TV's Mango Zhimei AI digital human anchor system had been deployed to county-level convergent media centers across multiple provinces, including implementations in Inner Mongolia, Zhejiang, and Shaanxi, extending the reach of Hunan-developed virtual human technology to local broadcast infrastructure throughout China.

In March 2025, Wondershare Technology (万兴科技) brought its Wondershare Virbo platform to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, presenting its combination of AIGC, digital virtual human technology, and short-video production capabilities to an international audience. The product, which supports more than 350 digital human avatars and more than 460 AI voice options, was positioned as a cross-border marketing tool enabling users to generate presenter-fronted videos without filming, and its appearance at MWC 2025 represented the most prominent international showcase the Changsha-headquartered company had undertaken for its digital human product line.

In the first quarter of 2025, Mango Super Media disclosed in its quarterly report that virtual character generation and AI-based automated editing technologies had been applied to a range of productions, including the documentary series "China Official Admonishments 2," the micro short drama "Safety Evacuation Cyber Century," and a spring festival variety program broadcast on Hunan Satellite TV. The company's Mango large model had by this point supported more than seventy AI agents operating across its content production workflows, and a dedicated video generation research unit, the Shanhai Research Institute, had been established within the Mango TV technical organization. Virtual production technology costs had been reduced by forty percent as a result of this infrastructure. The AI director Ai Mang, which had debuted in the variety program "We Three" in March 2024, continued to be deployed in subsequent productions, with Mango Super Media reporting in its August 2025 investor communications that virtual digital humans had been applied across multiple scenarios including AI direction, virtual stand-ins, virtual brand ambassadors, and digital human characters for romance variety formats.

In September 2025, the all-AIGC wartime short drama "Coordinates" (《坐标》) was simultaneously released on Mango TV and Hunan Satellite TV, marking the debut of Mango TV's proprietary Shanhai AIGC content production platform as a full-scale production tool. The drama, jointly produced by the Damang Plan studio and the Prism AIGC studio, was produced using no real human performers, no location shooting, and no motion capture technology, with the entire pipeline from script through static frames, dynamic generation, and musical composition conducted through AI. The production achieved the top position on both the Maoyan short drama heat index and the effective playback index on its opening day, and broadcast simultaneously on Hunan Satellite TV in the prime evening slot. The Shanhai platform underlying the production was positioned by Mango TV as a standardized, scalable infrastructure for short drama production, with the goal of reducing single-drama production cycles and enabling batch-level output.

Also in October 2025, at the Malanshan Short Drama Night held as part of the national audio-visual content industry week in Changsha, Mango TV formally announced its AIGC Short Drama Creator Ecosystem Plan, opening its Shanhai AIGC platform to external creators and partners, providing access to 120 fully licensed script IPs, AI-generated shot composition, virtual scene generation, and AI voiceover tools across the full production chain. The initiative was framed as a move toward platform-level democratization of AIGC content production anchored in Malanshan Park's production cluster, which by this period accommodated more than one thousand small and medium production teams with a combined annual output exceeding one thousand short drama titles.

In November 2025, the annual China New Media Conference "Malanshan Time" cultural and creative event was held at the Malanshan Creative Park in Changsha, themed around intelligent convergence of innovation and the deep integration of culture and technology. Mango TV, along with companies including Chuangyi Technology, Bote Intelligence, and Zhenshitong, collectively presented self-developed AI large model products at the event, forming what organizers described as a Malanshan large model matrix. Representatives from Alibaba Cloud, VAST, and other technology companies delivered keynote addresses alongside Mango TV's own presentations, and six major projects were signed at the event across animated content, micro short drama, and intelligent sports equipment sectors. By this point, Malanshan Park housed 206 scale-above enterprises, 158 science and technology small and medium enterprises, 166 high-technology enterprises, and 28 specialized and sophisticated enterprises across its cluster.

[Mar 2026]