Shandong Digital Human Timeline

In January 2016, Shandong Digihuman Technology Co., Ltd. (山东数字人科技股份有限公司), headquartered in Jinan's High-Tech Zone, listed on the National Equities Exchange and Quotations under stock code 835670, giving Shandong's emerging digital human sector its first publicly traded enterprise. The company had spent the previous fourteen years building China's first systematic digital human anatomy system for medical education, and its capital markets entry positioned it as the province's foundational institution in the space. Also during 2016, Goertek Inc. (歌尔股份), headquartered in Weifang, rebranded from its earlier name Goertek Acoustics, and by that year its virtual reality hardware output accounted for approximately seventy percent of the global mid-to-high-end VR market by volume, supplying headsets for Sony PSVR and Facebook's Oculus platform; the company's scale in Weifang made Shandong an indispensable node in the global VR supply chain. At Shandong University's (山东大学) Weihai campus, researcher Bian Yulong (卞玉龙) published a scholarly framework paper on virtual reality and flow-state psychology that year, laying early academic groundwork for the university's engagement with virtual human systems.

In January 2017, Goertek made a strategic investment of approximately twenty-four point six million US dollars for a stake in Kopin Corporation, a United States-based micro-display company, to secure access to key lens technology for advanced VR headsets; this transaction occurred outside Shandong but strengthened the Weifang company's position in the global hardware supply chain. From April 2017, Shandong University's Weihai campus formally supported a funded research project led by Bian Yulong on the application of virtual human personality and feedback design in anxiety coping training for shy individuals, one of the earliest projects at any Shandong institution to study virtual human personality in a therapeutic and psychological context. In 2018, Shandong Digihuman Technology received the National Teaching Achievement Second Prize, recognizing the national reach of its China Digital Human Anatomy System across medical colleges. The Bian Yulong project concluded in December 2019 after more than two and a half years of investigation into virtual human-mediated psychological interventions conducted at the Weihai campus.

In June 2019, Goertek established the Qingdao Virtual Reality Research Institute (青岛虚拟现实研究院) in Qingdao, creating a dedicated local research base for VR innovation to complement its manufacturing presence in Weifang. By 2021, the combined VR industry chain in Shandong encompassed two hundred and forty-three enterprises generating more than sixty billion yuan in annual revenue, with VR product shipments exceeding ten million units, and Goertek's operations across Weifang and Qingdao remained the structural backbone of that chain throughout.

In May 2020, Qilu Yidian (齐鲁壹点), the digital news platform of Qilu Evening News under Shandong Radio and Television Station, deployed an AI news presenter called Xiao Yi (小壹) for automated reporting during National Two Sessions coverage in Jinan. While Xiao Yi functioned primarily as a text-to-speech news reader rather than a fully realized visual digital human character, the deployment marked Shandong media's first public experiment with AI-driven presenter figures. In December 2020, Shandong Digihuman Technology completed a Select Tier initial public offering financing round on the National Equities Exchange and Quotations, raising additional capital as it prepared for a more consequential market transition.

In January 2021, products developed by the Shandong University Digital Human Research Institute (山东大学数字人研究院), led by Professor Liu Shuwei (刘树伟), passed expert appraisal by the China Anatomy Society in Jinan, with both the High-Definition Digital Human Virtual Anatomy Table System and the Digital Human High-Definition Tomography Three-Dimensional Printing Model certified as reaching international advanced level. These certifications affirmed the institute's standing at the frontier of anatomical digital human science within China. In July 2021, the Shandong Provincial Government published the Shandong Province Fourteenth Five-Year Digital Strong Province Construction Plan (《山东省"十四五"数字强省建设规划》), designating virtual reality and augmented reality as key technology directions and identifying Qingdao as a targeted VR innovation base, embedding the province's digital infrastructure ambitions in formal policy for the first time at this tier. In November 2021, Shandong Digihuman Technology became one of the inaugural batch of companies listed on the newly established Beijing Stock Exchange, retaining stock code 835670, with total capital raised from public markets reaching approximately eight point three million US dollars, supplemented by roughly twenty million yuan in government research grants accumulated over the company's history. By this point its anatomy products had been deployed in more than five hundred medical colleges and physician training centres across China, and the company had built an export presence in more than forty countries, all from its base in Jinan.

In March 2022, the Shandong Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology and six co-issuing departments published the Three-Year Action Plan for Promoting High-Quality Development of the Virtual Reality Industry covering 2022 through 2024 (《山东省推动虚拟现实产业高质量发展三年行动计划（2022-2024年）》). The plan established a one-plus-four-plus-N regional layout with Qingdao as the central hub and Jinan, Weifang, Yantai, and Weihai as supporting cities, targeting a one-hundred-billion-yuan VR industry base and referencing the metaverse as an emerging frontier to be cultivated. In May 2022, Qingdao published its own VR Industry Development Action Plan for 2022 through 2024, targeting industry scale exceeding two hundred billion yuan by 2024 and designating Laoshan District as the city's core VR hub. In June 2022, the Shandong Provincial Government Office issued detailed VR industry policy measures offering subsidies of up to three million yuan for VR public experience centres, full additional research and development expense deductions for VR manufacturers, and one-time subsidies of up to two million yuan for VR enterprises pursuing initial public offerings.

In July 2022, the digital human city ambassador Qingdao Xiaoman (青岛小嫚) was officially launched in Qingdao by Shandong Jindong Digital Creative Co., Ltd. (山东金东数字创意股份有限公司), operating under the guidance of the Qingdao Municipal Government Press Office. The character made her first appearance on a naked-eye three-dimensional large screen at Baisheng Plaza on Zhongshan Road in Shinan District, where she was presented as the cultural tourism promotion ambassador for the district. Named using the Qingdao dialect term for a young woman, Xiaoman was the city's first city-level virtual intelligent digital human intellectual property character, and her launch represented a direct investment by local government in a photorealistic ambassador persona for civic and cultural branding.

In early September 2022, the ultra-realistic cultural heritage digital human Ban Zhao (班昭) debuted at the Ninth China Museum and Related Products and Technologies Expo at the Zhengzhou International Convention and Exhibition Center in Henan Province. Ban Zhao was created by Guangzhou Frontop Digital Creative Technology Co., Ltd. (广州凡拓数字创意科技股份有限公司) and co-hosted livestreams with museum experts in a dedicated digital human live room organized jointly with Wenbo Circle (文博圈); this event occurred outside Shandong, though the Wenbo Circle connection brought the production into contact with Shandong cultural heritage networks. In September 2022, at the Third China International Cultural Tourism Expo in Jinan, digitally reconstructed facial representations of Song Dynasty poet Li Qingzhao (李清照) and her contemporary Xin Qiji (辛弃疾) were created using AI face-recognition technology provided by SenseTime (商汤科技) and displayed as holographic projections in the metaverse exhibition hall of the Shandong Handmade (山东手造) Exhibition Experience Centre, with exhibition hall director Yang Gexin explaining the reconstruction process to attending media. This constituted one of the first deployments of AI-generated historical-figure digital humans at a major cultural event held in Shandong.

In December 2022, Shandong Radio and Television Station established the Metaverse and AI Innovation Laboratory (山东广播电视台元宇宙及人工智能创新实验室) in Jinan, operated through its subsidiary Shandong Yiqianhe Digital Technology Co., Ltd. (山东一千河数字科技有限公司). The laboratory was formed in collaboration with the Tsinghua University Metaverse Culture Laboratory (清华大学元宇宙文化实验室), the Beijing CAS Innovation Development Research Institute (北京中科创新发展研究院), the Zhejiang Digital Content Research Institute, the Nankai University Joint Metaverse Laboratory, and fifteen first-batch member companies drawn from the industry. Also in December 2022, the city of Jinan published its own Metaverse Industry Action Plan covering 2022 through 2025, providing municipal-level policy backing for digital human and related metaverse initiatives within the provincial capital.

In January 2023, Shandong Radio and Television Station introduced Hailan (海蓝), its first ultra-realistic female digital host, developed through the Metaverse and AI Innovation Laboratory by Shandong Yiqianhe Digital Technology. The character's name, meaning the blue of the sea, was drawn from a classical phrase evoking Shandong's cultural and geographic identity. In March 2023, Hailan appeared as a commentator on the flagship Shandong News Broadcast (《山东新闻联播》), making the station the first provincial-level broadcaster in China to deploy a hyper-realistic digital host on a main news programme. Also in March 2023, Hailan was presented at the national Two Sessions metaverse studio in Beijing, an appearance outside Shandong that extended the character's national profile, and the station's Qilu Channel (齐鲁频道) launched a separate digital character, a two-and-a-half-dimensional digital human called Su Xiaomei (苏小妹), developed using deep learning technology for natural speech and movement. In April 2023, Shandong Yiqianhe Digital Technology released Hailan's official concept video, and the station publicly announced a broader initiative to digitize fifty real hosts using bionic-level technology with the aim of building a comprehensive digital host database, with Hailan serving as the inaugural realization of that programme.

In April 2023, the digital human virtual recommendation officer Shiyi (拾忆) was formally launched at the 2023 Qingdao Film and Television Week by Qingdao Haifa Culture Group (青岛海发文化集团) in Qingdao's West Coast New Area. Shiyi is a male digital human described as born in Qingdao, standing one hundred and eighty-five centimetres tall, and designed as a virtual actor bridging digital and physical presentation; his name means picking up memories, alluding to Qingdao's century of film history as a production city.

In June 2023, the World Internet Conference Digital Civilization Nishan Dialogue (世界互联网大会数字文明尼山对话) was held at Qufu Nishan Sacred Land in Shandong, constituting the first thematic activity after the World Internet Conference became an international organization. At the event, 360 Group (三六零) founder Zhou Hongyi (周鸿祎) demonstrated AI-powered digital employee capabilities built on 360 Smart Brain (360智脑), generating a Nishan Scenic Area tourism promotional video in approximately three seconds, and publicly discussed the concept of creating a Confucius digital human for local tourism promotion.

In August 2023, Shandong Radio and Television Station launched Daiqing (岱青), described as China's first hyper-realistic male digital broadcaster, also created by the Metaverse and AI Innovation Laboratory through Shandong Yiqianhe Digital Technology. Named from the same classical Du Fu poem line that provided Hailan's name, Daiqing was planned for deployment in cultural variety programming including National Studies Young Masters (《国学小名士》) on Shandong Satellite TV, and together Hailan and Daiqing formed the broadcaster's symbolic mountains-and-sea pairing representing Shandong's geographic identity. In August and September 2023, the Twenty-Seventh Cross-Strait Economic and Trade Conference held a Metaverse Industry Cooperation Forum in Weifang where ten projects were formally signed and the Weifang Metaverse Industry Alliance was inaugurated, drawing directly on the province-wide policy framework established earlier that year.

In September 2023, Professor Liu Shuwei, director of the Shandong University Digital Human Research Institute, delivered a keynote report at the Digital Human Technology Innovation and Industry Application Forum held alongside the China International Digital Economy Expo in Shijiazhuang, Hebei; while the presentation occurred outside Shandong, it placed the province's academic digital human community prominently in the national policy conversation. Also in September 2023, six provincial departments jointly issued the Guidance on Accelerating Metaverse Industry Innovation and Development (《山东省加快元宇宙产业创新发展的指导意见》, 鲁工信电子〔2023〕181号), which explicitly named digital human generation as a key metaverse application software category to develop, alongside three-dimensional image engines and trusted data-space construction. The guidance set targets of one point five trillion yuan in metaverse-related industry scale by 2025, more than three thousand patents, and over one hundred ecosystem enterprises, and it designated five major industry parks including Jinan Qilu Software Park, Qingdao Virtual Reality Industry Park, and Weifang Metaverse Future Innovation Valley. By that year, Shandong ranked second nationally after Guangdong, tied with Zhejiang, in new digital human and virtual human enterprise registrations, adding more than seventy-six thousand new companies in a single year according to the China Virtual Digital Human Influence Index Report. In October 2023, the International VR Innovation Conference held in Qingdao featured dual interaction between real and virtual hosts, showcasing digital human presenter integration in professional conference programming within the province.

In December 2023, Hailan debuted as a real-time sign language anchor on Shandong Radio and Television Station's Flash Live Room (《闪电直播间》) on the News Channel, a technically demanding application requiring synchronized lip movement, sign language gesture generation, and live broadcast delivery simultaneously within a single digital human system. This capability subsequently received first prize in the Virtual Digital Human Technology Application category at the National Radio and Television Administration's Third Broadcasting and Network AI Application Innovation Competition, the results of which were announced in April 2024.

In February 2024, Jinan Broadcasting and Television Station (济南广播电视台) debuted two digital hosts in its Spring Festival programming: Beichen (北辰), described as an AI Observer, and Sixuan (思萱). Both characters belonged to the municipal broadcaster rather than the provincial station, and their Spring Festival appearances represented the expansion of digital host deployment to the Jinan city broadcasting tier. By March 2024, the Qufu Three Confucius Sites scenic area (曲阜三孔景区) had launched an AI guide system called You Sankong (游三孔), developed by Shanyan Digital Technology (Shandong) Co., Ltd. (山演数字科技（山东）有限责任公司) and featuring augmented reality-based guidance with GPS-triggered commentary. A digital human character named Kong Xiaoqiu (孔小丘) was developed as an upgrade to the system and confirmed operational by March 2025, giving the Confucian heritage site a named, embodied digital guide persona.

In May 2024, Inspur Intelligent Terminal Co., Ltd. (浪潮智能终端有限公司), based in Jinan, was reported to have developed AI interactive digital humans through its Digital Human Product Department led by General Manager Wang Peiyuan (王培元). The system used two-dimensional video-driven technology and could produce four-K-resolution digital human models within hours from as little as two minutes of source video footage, employing more than ten underlying algorithms including three-dimensional motion-field face deformation, image super-resolution processing, and voice cloning. In June 2024, Rizhao Broadcasting and Television Station (日照广播电视台) launched a digital host named Zhixia (智夏), modeled on real presenter Wang Zhixia (王智夏), for deployment in news coverage; Zhixia's arrival marked digital human adoption reaching smaller Shandong cities beyond the provincial and capital-level broadcasters, extending the institutional presenter model across the province's media landscape.

In July 2024, Shandong Radio and Television Station launched Hailan New Voice (《海蓝新声》), described as the station's first AI digital host television news column, co-produced by the News Channel and Shandong Yiqianhe Digital Technology. The programme aired every Sunday and used AI-assisted topic selection combined with a one-click digital host generation workflow to produce news segments, representing a move from individual digital human appearances toward a standing programme format built around a digital presenter. Also in July 2024, the Thirty-Second National Book Trade Fair (第32届全国图书交易博览会) was held at the Shandong International Convention and Exhibition Centre in Jinan, where the exhibition area organized by Jinan Publishing House (济南出版社) deployed a digital human Li Qingzhao character to engage visitors in real-time conversations about Jinan cuisine, tourism routes, and poetry games using AI-generated content technology, attracting attention as one of the most effective visitor engagement activities at the national fair.

In August 2024, the China Anatomy Society organized expert appraisal for Shandong Digihuman Technology's new product lines in Shandong, certifying both the Three-Dimensional Printed Human Simulation Model and the Digital Human STEM Anatomy System as domestically pioneering and internationally advanced, extending the company's record of formal academic certification. During 2024, Jinan's smart computing capacity reached four thousand seven hundred and sixty-three petaflops, with eleven large models filed with national authorities representing sixty-four point seven percent of all Shandong provincial filings, establishing the provincial capital as the primary AI computing centre supporting the province's digital human infrastructure.

In September 2024, at the First Education Digital Human Competition (首届教育数字人大赛) held in Beijing, Shandong University of Art and Design (山东工艺美术学院) submitted four projects to the finals and received two second prizes, one third prize, and one participation award; while the competition occurred outside Shandong, the results demonstrated the province's growing academic capacity in applied digital human design education. During 2024, Shandong Radio and Television Station developed an emergency broadcasting digital human rapid-release system for the Shandong Radio and TV Bureau, using Hailan as the broadcast personality for emergency alerts and designing the system to operate on the emergency broadcasting intranet without internet connectivity, providing resilient real-time digital human broadcast capability for public safety communications across the province. Also during 2024, the government service centre in Jinan's Tianqiao District deployed an embodied digital human guide named Xiao Qiao (小桥), capable of responding to more than seven hundred common questions about administrative procedures, policies, and regulations, representing the penetration of digital human technology into front-line public service delivery within Shandong.

In November 2024, Beijing DeHeng Law Offices (北京德和衡律师事务所) and Shandong DeHeng Law Offices (山东德衡律师事务所) jointly launched an AI Virtual Digital Human Programme at their Shandong regional business centre. The first batch comprised eight digital human lawyers representing eight practice areas: criminal-civil crossover matters, criminal law, securities, finance, trust and wealth management, construction and real estate, corporate affairs, and international trade and customs. The technology was provided by XiaoIce (小冰) North China Operations Centre and Jingzhi Digital Technology, and executive director Yang Peiyin (杨培银) described the initiative as part of the firm's digital branding strategy, making it one of the earliest Chinese law firm deployments of named, practice-area-specific AI digital human lawyer figures.

Also in November 2024, two interrelated milestones occurred simultaneously in Jinan. The Qilu Culture Model (齐鲁文化大模型), Shandong's first cultural large language model, opened for public beta testing, and Qifeng (齐风) and Luyun (鲁韵) debuted as the first pair of Qilu Digital Culture Recommendation Officers (齐鲁数字文化推荐官), both three-dimensional ultra-realistic digital humans built on the Yidian Tiancheng (壹点天成) digital human platform, which had by that point produced more than sixty digital human products in total. The Qilu Culture Model integrated six content areas with forty-six Shandong cultural markers and approximately twenty billion data entries, received dual registration from the Cyberspace Administration of China, and was subsequently referenced in the 2025 Shandong Provincial Government Work Report. In December 2024, a sports digital human named Good Luck (好运) was unveiled at the Good Luck Shandong Marathon City League Awards Ceremony at Jinan Rongchuang Mall, organized by the Shandong Provincial Sports Bureau and co-organized by the Shandong Provincial Sports Industry Development Service Centre and Jinan Daily Newspaper Group, with companion mascot intellectual property characters named Haohao (好好) and Yunbao (运宝) released at the same ceremony. Later in December 2024, the digital human host Luyun appeared as a presenter at the opening ceremony of the Third Jinan International Biennale at the Shandong Art Museum, themed Human Intelligence Era (人智时代), an exhibition featuring works by more than two hundred artists from twenty-one countries and regions, marking Luyun's integration into flagship contemporary art programming in Jinan.

In January 2025, Shandong Electronics Vocational College (山东电子职业技术学院) in Jinan launched Xiao Shan (小闪) and Xiao Dian (小电), described as the first independently developed digital humans produced by a Shandong vocational college. Named using characters homophonous with the college's abbreviated title, and developed with a Dragon-Horse Spirit design concept by the college's cultural research institute director Song Zhiqiang, the characters were co-published with Zhangqiu Integrated Media, and coverage appeared in Xinhua, People's Daily, and Guangming Daily.

In April 2025, Shandong Digital Culture Group Co., Ltd. (山东数字文化集团有限公司) was formally established in Qingdao at the Shandong Cultural and Technological Deep Integration Innovation Conference. A provincial-level state-owned cultural enterprise operating under Dazhong Media Group (大众报业集团), the group assumed operational responsibility for the Qilu Culture Model and the Yidian Tiancheng digital human platform. By mid-2025 the organization had accumulated fifty-three national patents, more than one hundred and thirty software copyrights, and twenty-one national technology invention patents, and the Qilu Culture Model had received five-star certification from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.

In May 2025, at the Nineteenth Oriental Congress of Cardiology held in Shanghai, an AI digital twin of Chinese Academy of Sciences Academician Ge Junbo (葛均波) from Fudan University Zhongshan Hospital was unveiled; built on the CardioMind (观心大模型) cardiovascular AI model developed by Zhongshan Hospital and the Shanghai Scientific Intelligence Research Institute, the digital twin incorporated a Shandong accent reflecting Academician Ge's provincial origins, encoding Shandong cultural identity into a digital figure deployed outside the province.

In June and July 2025, the Shandong Securities Regulatory Bureau issued a correction order and warning letter to Shandong Digihuman Technology for financial reporting irregularities, including misstated revenue recognition for fiscal years 2021 through 2023 and identified deficiencies in internal controls related to contract management, procurement, and accounts receivable. The regulatory action introduced a material governance caveat into the trajectory of the province's flagship medical digital human company.

In October 2025, the Qilu Talent (齐鲁人才) platform deployed an AI virtual host at job fairs in Jinan, operating a real-time AI livestream job matching system that introduced participating companies, directed job seekers to booth locations, and answered questions in real time. At a single event the system handled more than one thousand questions and facilitated tens of thousands of effective employment matching interactions, demonstrating the application of digital human presenter technology to large-scale labour market services within Shandong. Also in October 2025, the Tenth China International Copyright Expo (第十届中国国际版权博览会) was held at the Qingdao International Convention and Exhibition Centre in Laoshan District, drawing fifty-seven exhibition groups and more than eleven hundred enterprises across approximately fifty thousand square metres, where Shandong Digital Culture Group exhibited an interactive holographic Confucius digital human capable of engaging visitors in substantive conversations about Confucian philosophy, alongside demonstrations of the Qilu Culture Model and virtual reality experiences of Shandong historical sites. Later in October 2025, the ASEAN+3 AI Industry Development Forum was held at the Jinan Sunac International Conference Centre, themed Smart Wisdom from the East, Digital Connection for the Future (智济东方·数联未来), with more than sixty international guests from Association of Southeast Asian Nations member states and from Japan and South Korea attending alongside more than one hundred Chinese AI enterprise representatives, producing the Jinan AI Regional Cooperation Initiative and a supply-demand matching list covering one hundred enterprises and one hundred scenarios.

In October and November 2025, Shandong Digihuman Technology participated in the One Hundred and Thirty-Eighth Canton Fair Phase Three in Guangzhou, appearing in the fair's inaugural Intelligent Healthcare Zone; this activity occurred outside Shandong. In November 2025, the company exhibited its anatomy education products at MEDICA, the International Medical Trade Fair in Düsseldorf, Germany, and later that month participated in the Rosmedobr Academic Conference in Moscow in support of its Russian distribution partner. In December 2025, Shandong Digihuman Technology returned to Moscow for Russian Healthcare Week 2025 at Crocus Expo, completing a sustained international exhibition programme across two months in two countries. Also in December 2025, the company provided technical support for the Fourth National Medical Morphology Competition finals hosted by Shandong University Qilu Medical College (山东大学齐鲁医学院) in Jinan, bringing its digital anatomy tools back into direct service at a major national academic competition in the province and closing out the decade with the same medical digital human specialism with which Shandong had first distinguished itself ten years earlier.

[Mar 2026]