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In September 2022, the verified record of digital human activity in Liaoning Province begins with the launch of the Third Huawei Cloud VR Development Application and Shenyang Metaverse Development Application Contest (第三届华为云VR开发应用暨沈阳元宇宙开发应用大赛), co-hosted by the Heping District Government of Shenyang and Huawei Technologies (华为技术有限公司), which had maintained a continuous institutional presence in Heping District since 2019. This edition was historically significant as the first iteration of the contest to introduce dedicated Digital Human IP and Digital Human Application competition tracks alongside its existing VR and AR categories, with specific awards including the Popular Digital Human Image Award, the Popular Virtual Idol Award, and the Digital Heping Award. Registration opened in September 2022 with a submission deadline in October, and the contest ultimately drew 319 participating teams and 480 developers, with 37 projects advancing to a final round.
In February 2023, those finalists gathered for the awards ceremony in Shenyang's Heping District, held in conjunction with the Shenyang Metaverse Industry Summit (沈阳元宇宙产业峰会). The summit drew more than 400 attendees in person and over one million viewers online, and its most prominent feature was the deployment of a digital human named Yunmeng (云梦), produced by Huawei Cloud MetaStudio, who served as master of ceremonies throughout the awards presentation. Yunmeng announced the winning projects and animated the proceedings, marking one of the earliest instances of a digital human serving a live hosting function at a major technology industry gathering in Liaoning. The same event saw the signing of a tripartite strategic cooperation agreement between the Heping District Government, Huawei Cloud, and Liaoning Broadcasting and Television Station (辽宁广播电视台) to co-develop the Wulihé Huawei Audio-Visual Joint Innovation Center (五里河华为音视听联合创新中心), and the formal unveiling of the Huawei (Liaoning) XR Innovation Center (华为（辽宁）XR创新中心), consolidating Heping District's position as the province's primary hub for extended reality and digital human infrastructure.
In August 2023, the China Newspaper New Media (Client) Development Conference (中国报业新媒体（客户端）发展大会), organized by the China Newspaper Association (中国报业协会) and its affiliated evening newspaper workers' association alongside the Shenyang Municipal Party Committee and Government, convened in Shenyang with 165 media organizations sending 260 delegates. During the conference, Xiaoguan (小观), a digital AI news presenter developed by Chuanguan News (川观新闻), the digital platform of Sichuan Daily (四川日报), received a Digital Technology Application Innovation Excellence Case award. Xiaoguan had originally launched in September 2022 as an AI-generated news presenter for the Sichuan Daily group, and its recognition at a national conference held in Shenyang brought visibility to the category of digital human news presenters within the Liaoning media landscape, even though the product itself originated in Sichuan.
In January 2024, a team of students at Northeastern University (东北大学) in Shenyang founded a group called X-friend under the leadership of sophomore Huang Yuhang (黄宇航), oriented toward developing 2.5D digital human products. By July 2024, their work had achieved a notable technical milestone: the team's digital humans passed WeChat Video Account real-person authentication, enabling them to operate as functional digital human presenters within social media ecosystems. The team also created digital human presenters commissioned by the Shenyang Dadong District Human Resources and Social Security Bureau (大东区人力资源和社会保障局), applied through administrative channels to become a registered enterprise at the Shenyang X-Land Youth Science and Technology Innovation Hub, and signed a northern China strategic cooperation agreement with MoFa (Shanghai) Information Technology (魔珐（上海）信息科技有限公司). These developments were covered by Shenyang Evening News (沈阳晚报) in July 2024, which also reported on the concurrent 2024 AI Tour Shenyang Text-to-Short-Video Contest (2024"AI漫游沈阳"文生短视频大赛), a Shenyang-wide creative competition structured around three thematic chapters in which digital humans served as central creative elements. Contest submissions featured a professional digital tourism guide named Zhai Xiaowei (翟小玮), who appeared in videos narrating futuristic scenarios involving Shenyang landmarks.
In October 2024, Aier Eye Hospital Group (爱尔眼科医院集团) officially launched Eyecho (爱科), an ophthalmology-specialist AI digital human, at the opening ceremony of the Northeastern University-affiliated Liaoning Aier Eye Hospital (东北大学附属辽宁爱尔眼科医院) Regional Ophthalmology Medical Center in Shenyang's Heping District. Eyecho combined AIGC-driven neural rendering for realistic digital human synthesis with the group's proprietary AierGPT large language model, built through retrieval-augmented generation using a clinical knowledge base developed with contributions from more than 100 ophthalmology specialists drawn from Liaoning Aier, Shenzhen Aier, and Changsha Aier. The system was developed by the Aier Digital Eye Research Institute and supported three primary application scenarios: pre-surgical patient education, bilingual lobby display at the hospital's entrance, and post-surgical mobile companion care delivered through a patient-facing application. The launch was reported by China Consumer News, Sina Finance, and VB Data.
In February 2025, Eyecho received a significant technical upgrade at the same Shenyang hospital, integrating the DeepSeek R1 reasoning model to improve concurrent processing speed and extend the system's deployment readiness across Aier Eye Hospital Group's broader global network of facilities. The upgrade was framed by Aier as opening a new phase of the group's digital ophthalmology strategy, extending Eyecho's potential reach from a single flagship hospital in Shenyang into pre-hospital, in-hospital, and post-hospital clinical scenarios across the organization's international footprint. China News Service reported on the upgrade in February 2025.
In March 2025, two separate digital human milestones occurred in Shenyang within weeks of each other, both reflecting the province's deepening integration of digital human technology into public governance. Early in the month, the Heping District Government Service Center launched Xiao He (小和), described by provincial media as Liaoning's first AI government service agent, powered by the DeepSeek large language model in combination with intent-recognition plugins and retrieval-augmented generation to handle more than 300 categories of high-frequency government service inquiries, with voice recognition accuracy reported at 99 percent. Beidou Cloud Digital Technology (北斗云数字科技公司) served as the technology partner and presented its development roadmap at the launch event, which was reported by China News Service and the Shenyang municipal government website. Later that month, the Liaoning State-owned Assets "Embracing AI" Special Action Launch Ceremony (辽宁国资"拥抱AI"专项行动启动仪式) was held at the Liaoning Hall of the Friendship Palace within the Liaoning Friendship Hotel (辽宁友谊宾馆友谊宫辽宁厅) in Shenyang, drawing approximately 300 attendees from provincial departments, centrally administered enterprises operating in Liaoning, and municipal State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission organizations across the province. A generative AI digital human named Guozi Xiaozhi (国资小智), jointly developed by the Liaoning Provincial SASAC (辽宁省国资委) and Northeastern University, served as the sole host for all eight agenda items on the ceremony program, integrating multimodal interaction, speech synthesis, and natural language processing throughout the event. The same ceremony witnessed the unveiling of the Liaoning State-Owned Assets AI Research Institute, the Liaoning Digital Intelligence Group, and the release of eleven AI application scenario demand projects, and was subsequently reported on the Liaoning Provincial Government portal and cross-posted by the national State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.
In June 2025, the Heping District Government advanced its digital human government services infrastructure further with the launch of the Smart Heping (智慧和平) platform on June 10, which introduced a new dedicated digital human named He Zhixuan (和智宣). He Zhixuan was built on DeepSeek AI as its core reasoning engine, supplemented by Baidu's deep learning framework, knowledge-enhanced large models, and multimodal interaction technology, and integrated policy publicity, administrative services, cultural communication, and livelihood services into a unified interface. The Shenyang municipal government website published the announcement the following day. Also in June 2025, Liaoning Mechatronics Vocational and Technical College (辽宁机电职业技术学院) in Dandong issued a procurement tender for an AI Digital Imaging Virtual Reality Training Centre with a budget ceiling of 970,000 yuan, specifying at least five metaverse digital human model sets alongside AI graphics workstations, VR position-tracking equipment, ten VR headsets, five AR glasses, and an LED immersive display wall measuring 5,860 by 3,360 millimeters. The procurement agent was Dandong Jinze Engineering Cost Consulting (丹东金泽工程造价咨询事务所有限公司). After the initial bidding round failed, the college re-tendered in July 2025, and an award notice was subsequently published.
In September 2025, the Liaoning Medical Security Bureau (辽宁省医疗保障局) formally launched an AI digital human named Yibao'er (依保儿), also known as Liao Xiaobao (辽小保), at a ceremony in Shenyang tied to a university campus medical insurance enrollment promotion campaign. The system was designed to provide round-the-clock consultation on health insurance policy, guidance on administrative procedures, and personal records lookup through the Alipay Liaoning Medical Insurance mini-program and the WeChat account of the Liaoning Medical Security Service Center (辽宁省医疗保障服务中心), with adaptive features for elderly users including enlarged fonts and a voice-first interaction mode covering three service modules. Liaoning Daily reported the launch in September 2025.
In October 2025, the Smart Heping platform in Shenyang's Heping District was extended into a WeChat mini-program incorporating third-party services including Ctrip, Ele.me, Meituan, and Dianping, deepening He Zhixuan's role as a multimodal public interface for district residents. In November 2025, Yibao'er's service scope expanded to include full WeChat integration, broadening its reach across the province.
By February 2026, the Liaoning Provincial Museum (辽宁省博物馆) in Shenyang's Hunnan District had reported that its AI virtual guide, Liao Xiaobo (辽小博), had cumulatively answered more than 100,000 visitor questions. Liao Xiaobo was modeled on the museum's jade pig dragon artifact and operated through on-site terminals, using generative large-model capabilities to respond to open-ended inquiries about the collection, offer personalized exhibition recommendations, and assist visitors with indoor navigation, transforming the traditional one-directional audio tour into a conversational experience. Liaoning Daily reported in February 2026 that the National Cultural Heritage Administration had recognized the museum as one of twenty national benchmark cases for smart museum development, citing Liao Xiaobo's contribution to that designation.
[Mar 2026]