Tianjin Digital Human Timeline

The story of Tianjin's digital human ecosystem begins with foundational infrastructure that the city had quietly assembled before the term "digital human" had entered common industry usage. The National Animation Park (国家动漫园), located in the Sino-Singapore Eco-City within Binhai New Area, had established an eighty-million-yuan public technology service platform housing China's first three-dimensional real-time pre-monitoring system, along with facial motion-capture and hand motion-capture systems and a large optical motion-capture studio equipped with dozens of infrared cameras. Its facial animation capture technology stood as the sole Tianjin project approved under the Ministry of Culture's National Cultural Science and Technology Enhancement Plan, and productions processed through the facility included the Japanese three-dimensional film Tekken and the Chinese animated films Seer and Mole Manor 2. This infrastructure laid the computational and capture foundations upon which later virtual character and digital human production in Tianjin would depend, even though the facility's output in this period remained primarily animated feature-film content rather than interactive or conversational digital beings.

In August 2016, the National Animation Park formalized a partnership with ShineWonder (炫我科技) to establish the Tianjin Cloud Rendering Center within the park, connecting its production pipeline directly to the Tianhe-1 supercomputer at the National Supercomputing Center Tianjin (国家超级计算天津中心). The integration transformed the facility into one of China's largest animation rendering centers and extended the reach of Tianjin's supercomputing resources into animated character production, forging the link between the city's high-performance computing assets and its virtual content industry that would recur in more specialized forms over the following decade. Both the park and the new rendering center were located in Tianjin.

In May 2018, iFlytek (科大讯飞) opened its Tianjin Industrial Acceleration Center, branded internally as the Intelligent Valley (智慧谷), in the Airport Economic Area of the Port Free Trade Zone. The center brought iFlytek's AI voice synthesis and virtual-human enabling technologies into Tianjin's enterprise ecosystem and established a local institutional foothold for the company that would make it a recurring partner in the city's digital human deployments in subsequent years.

The city's first verifiable demonstration of a modern, embodied digital human took place in May 2019, when the Third World Intelligence Congress convened at the Meijiang Convention Center in Tianjin. At the event, iFlytek showcased its AI multilingual virtual anchor Xiao Qing (小晴) on a large exhibition booth screen, performing real-time broadcasting sequences in Chinese, English, Japanese, and Korean simultaneously. The demonstration drew large crowds and was covered by The Paper and the official Tianjin Cyberspace Administration account, marking the first time a named virtual human presenter appeared at a major Tianjin public forum. No equivalent digital human demonstrations had been identified at the First World Intelligence Congress in 2017 or the Second in 2018, nor at Summer Davos forums held in Tianjin during those years.

The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 prompted the Fourth World Intelligence Congress to shift entirely online, and no specific digital human presenter was identified in coverage of that edition. The pandemic nonetheless accelerated digital adoption across Chinese media institutions more broadly, and it was in this context that Jinyun New Media (津云新媒体), a subsidiary of the Haihe Media Center and part of Tianjin's official media apparatus, began developing its own three-dimensional virtual anchor. The character, named Yun Xiaoduo (云小朵), was built using a combination of artificial intelligence, motion capture, augmented reality, and mixed-reality technologies, with TOF positioning and bone-calculation methods employed to achieve realistic movement.

In May 2021, Yun Xiaoduo made her first public appearance at the Fifth World Intelligence Congress in Tianjin, where she provided a guided virtual tour of the Smart Technology Exhibition across its six thematic zones. The deployment represented the first time Tianjin's own media infrastructure had produced a locally developed virtual anchor for a major public event in the city, distinguishing Jinyun New Media's contribution from earlier WIC appearances by iFlytek, which had brought an externally developed character to a Tianjin venue.

Yun Xiaoduo's formal editorial debut came in March 2022, when she co-produced the Cloud View of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (云瞰京津冀) series together with Beijing's Qianlong.com and Hebei's Great Wall New Media during the National Two Sessions reporting period. The joint production marked her transition from exhibition guide to working media presenter, though the series itself had a regional scope that extended beyond Tianjin alone, reflecting the character's growing profile as a regional media personality rather than a purely local one.

In April 2022, the TEDA Library (泰达图书馆) in Binhai New Area became the first public library in Tianjin to deploy virtual digital human screens serving as digital librarians. These interactive terminals fused image recognition, speech synthesis, semantic understanding, and human portrait modeling, enabling visitors to query the digital librarian by voice to receive book recommendations, navigate digital resources, and obtain knowledge assistance. A VR panoramic virtual library was deployed alongside the interactive figures, and together the two installations constituted one of Tianjin's earliest persistent public-facing digital human deployments, with both systems located in the city.

In October 2022, Nankai University (南开大学) announced the launch of what it described as China's first Metaverse School of Journalism and Communication (元宇宙新闻与传播学院), timed to coincide with the university's founding anniversary. The school's virtual campus infrastructure included a digital replica of the historic Xiushan Hall, constructed using the LayaAir three-dimensional engine developed by Beijing Lanya Box Technology (北京蓝亚盒子科技), and Dean Liu Yadong announced plans to create virtual professor digital humans, build virtual classrooms, and offer metaverse master classes. The same announcement introduced what was reported as China's first undergraduate elective course on the metaverse and the evolution of media. By December 2022, the school had conducted its first metaverse virtual classroom session, in which a guest lecturer participated via avatar, demonstrating that the planned virtual professor infrastructure was operationally active at Nankai's campus in Tianjin, even if still in early form.

In May 2023, the Seventh World Intelligence Congress took place at the National Exhibition and Convention Center in Tianjin and marked a clear step change in the prominence of digital human technology at the annual forum. Bank of China featured a digital human in its themed zone titled Encounter · Digital Future, allowing visitors to converse with and photograph a virtual character in an immersive future-banking experience, representing one of the first instances of a major Chinese state-owned bank deploying a named digital human at a Tianjin event. Displays of five-generation digital humans appeared among the congress's technology exhibition highlights, and in one of the exhibition halls, an installation operated by Magic Box Interactive (魔盒互动) projected a holographic digital-twin figure that audiences could dance alongside, play games with, and photograph. All of these demonstrations occurred in Tianjin.

In October 2023, a landmark development for Tianjin's port sector arrived when PortGPT, a port-industry artificial intelligence large model incorporating a digital human assistant, was officially launched at the Smart Port Conference. The project was jointly developed by Tianjin Port Group (天津港集团), Zhejiang Sea Port Group (浙海港集团), Huawei (华为), the National Supercomputing Center Tianjin, and Cloudwalk Technology (云从科技). As part of the PortGPT system, a digital human named Tiantian (天天) — the name meaning "every day" — was created to serve port enterprise production shift-handover meetings, answer port-sector queries, and support corporate promotion activities. The launch occurred in Tianjin, and Tiantian became the first digital human deployed in operational contexts at one of China's busiest cargo ports.

In April 2024, Tianjin University (天津大学) introduced one of the year's most widely reported academic digital human applications, at the university's Peiyangyuan Campus in Tianjin. The School of Electrical and Information Engineering launched a full-process, full-link artificial intelligence teaching assistant system for the undergraduate course Power System Fundamentals, led by Professor Liu Yanli (刘艳丽), with the system built in collaboration with iFlytek. At its core were two components: a Digital Teacher module capable of generating lecture videos directly from uploaded courseware, and a question-and-answer large model designed for ongoing student interaction. The virtual digital teacher was modeled on a one-to-one likeness of Professor Liu herself, and the deployment was covered by China Youth Daily, China Education Daily, and the university's own news platform.

Also in April 2024, a three-dimensional acupuncture digital human emerged from a consortium of Tianjin institutions. The Tianhe Lingshu large model (天河灵枢大模型), described as the world's first professional large model for traditional Chinese medicine acupuncture, was released that month at the Third China TCM High-Quality Development Conference. The model was built on the Tianhe Tianyuan foundation model and featured detailed professional modeling of all human acupoints, with simulation capability for needle depth, angles, force, and moxibustion therapies. Five Tianjin-based institutions co-developed it: the National Supercomputing Center Tianjin, Modern Chinese Medicine Haihe Laboratory (现代中医药海河实验室), Tianjin University of TCM (天津中医药大学), Tianjin University, and Xinchuang Haihe Laboratory (信创海河实验室). The release conference, however, took place in Wuzhen, Zhejiang rather than in Tianjin, even though the product's development and institutional authorship were entirely rooted in the city.

In June 2024, two significant events coincided with the 2024 World Intelligent Industry Expo, which was co-hosted by Tianjin and Chongqing that month. On the eve of the expo's formal opening, Ant Cloud Technology Group (蚂蚁云科技集团) — an AI company operating a dedicated AI Digital Human Research Institute — signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Tianjin's Hedong District government to establish its North China regional headquarters at the Mian3 Creative Street development, with planned investment exceeding 300 million yuan. The agreement represented one of the most substantial private-sector commitments to digital human activity in Tianjin to that point. During the expo itself, Tianjin Port Group and Huawei jointly released PortGPT 1.0 alongside a Port Digital Transformation White Paper, formally upgrading the port AI and digital human system that had been introduced in October 2023. Both events took place in Tianjin.

In August 2024, Tianjin Lingjing Zhiyou Technology (天津灵境智游科技有限公司), a Tianjin-based company developing digital human products for electronic commerce and livestreaming, was referenced in a Xinhua report on artificial intelligence digital human commerce in China, indicating that at least one Tianjin-native startup was participating in the commercial digital human sector. Separately, Lingang Port Group (临港港务集团) registered a Smart Brain Digital Human (智脑数字人) as a data intellectual property entry on the Tianjin Data Intellectual Property Registration Platform. The system was designed to draw from knowledge bases and serve simultaneously as a legal specialist, secretary assistant, customer service agent, and industry analyst for port operations, and it was located in the Binhai New Area Port Free Trade Zone within Tianjin.

In late 2024, the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts (天津美术学院) established what was reported as China's first AI Art Academy, with programs spanning metaverse and gamified learning as well as digital media art and plans to begin enrollment in 2025. The initiative extended Tianjin's institutional engagement with digital and virtual content forms beyond engineering and media into the fine arts, adding a creative-industry dimension to the city's growing ecosystem.

In January 2025, Baidu (百度) registered Baidu Intelligent Cloud (Tianjin) Technology Co., Ltd. at the Tiankai High-Education Sci-Tech Innovation Park's Jinnan Campus, becoming the first new enterprise to receive a business license at the park in the new year. A Xinhua report confirmed that the park's more than two thousand resident enterprises included at least one developer of AI digital human interactive systems, underscoring the park's growing relevance to that sector and establishing the presence of a major national AI platform company within Tianjin's innovation geography.

In February 2025, Tianjin University of Finance and Economics (天津财经大学) began integrating DeepSeek technology into its generative artificial intelligence courses, with sessions launching from late in the month. The courses at this stage focused on AI agents for financial analysis rather than digital human design specifically, though the university's growing engagement with generative AI established the technical groundwork for more explicitly digital-human-oriented programming it would launch later in the year.

In March 2025, national broadcaster CCTV aired a report drawing attention to the proliferation of deepfake videos bearing the likeness of Academician Zhang Boli (张伯礼), honorary president of Tianjin University of TCM. Zhang confirmed that at least a dozen AI-generated videos misrepresenting him as endorsing skincare products had appeared online, and the university sent an urgent letter to internet regulators requesting their removal. The episode highlighted the dual-use risks of digital human and synthetic media technology in the context of a prominent Tianjin-affiliated public figure, and it attracted significant national media attention precisely because Zhang was one of the most recognizable figures in Chinese medicine.

In April 2025, Tianjin's Science and Technology Bureau released for public comment a draft of the Tianjin AI Innovation Development Three-Year Action Plan covering 2025 through 2027. The plan set a target of core AI enterprise revenue exceeding 100 billion yuan by 2027, alongside goals for thirty benchmark AI application scenarios and the establishment of three to four specialized industry clusters. Significantly for the digital human sector, the plan explicitly supported the promotion and application of digital human teaching assistant systems, and it referenced digital human technology across sections on education, urban management, and cultural tourism. In May 2025, the final version of the action plan was officially issued, formalizing the policy framework that had been circulated for comment the previous month. Both the draft release and the final issuance were actions of Tianjin municipal authorities and occurred in Tianjin.

In May 2025, the Tianjin Banqiao Compulsory Isolation Drug Rehabilitation Center held a media open day at the Heping District Social Detox and Rehabilitation Guidance Station, introducing an AI digital human named Officer Xiao Qiao (小乔警官) as an anti-drug education presenter. The digital human had been created by the center's Smart Link Pioneer workshop, which was established in March 2025, using DeepSeek, AI animation, and intelligent editing tools, and plans were announced at the event to develop Officer Xiao Qiao into a continuously available anti-drug knowledge consultation service. People's Daily confirmed the story, and the deployment occurred in Tianjin, representing an unusual application of digital human technology in a public-safety and rehabilitation context. Around the same period in spring 2025, Tianjin Normal University (天津师范大学) implemented an AI digital counselor system known as the Answer Person Teacher (答人老师), designed to provide students with around-the-clock support on questions related to employment platforms, enrollment certificates, and student services. The system's existence was confirmed via the university's official website and a reference in China Youth Daily, and the deployment was in Tianjin. Also in May 2025, a scholarly contribution to the field arrived when Tianjin University of Technology (天津理工大学) had a paper on virtual influencers published in an academic journal, having been received for peer review in the preceding autumn; the publication extended Tianjin's academic engagement with virtual human research beyond the deployment and policy domains that had dominated the city's output.

In June 2025, Tianjin University of Finance and Economics launched its AI Digital Human Navigator Professional Exploration Plan (AI数字人领航·专业探秘计划) for the 2025 undergraduate admissions season. Using AI-generated content technology, the university created virtual digital human ambassadors who guide prospective students through immersive representations of each of its colleges' professional environments, and Central People's Broadcasting Corporation described the initiative as one of the most innovative admissions campaigns among Chinese universities that year. The program was produced and deployed in Tianjin.

Also in June 2025, the National Animation Park unveiled its new Metaverse Innovation Practice Center, an 1,800-square-meter facility in the Sino-Singapore Eco-City focused on technology infrastructure, cultural intellectual property incubation, and scenario-based applications. Partners in the center included China Mobile Migu (中国移动咪咕), providing AI model technology, and Bluefocus (蓝色光标) in collaboration with Tianjin Vocational Technology Normal University (天津职业技术师范大学), which was co-building a Metaverse Joint Laboratory within the facility. Singapore's Infocomm Media Development Authority and Temasek Polytechnic also participated as international partners. The facility incorporated virtual digital exhibition halls, VR large-space experiences, and XR virtual shooting studios, representing a significant expansion of the park's original motion-capture and rendering capabilities — first assembled a decade earlier through the ShineWonder partnership — into interactive virtual-being production. The center was located in Tianjin.

In August 2025, Bank of Tianjin (天津银行) initiated a formal procurement process for its New Intelligent Digital Human Platform Project, publishing a tender with a budget of 796,000 yuan as it sought a vendor to build and deploy a customer-facing digital human platform. That same month, Tianjin's Industrial and Information Technology Bureau published an article titled Digital Tianjin — Leading the Future, which highlighted PortGPT and the digital employees at Tianjin Port as signature achievements of the city's digital economy. Tianjin Port Group also continued to develop its port virtual digital human (港口虚拟数字人) capabilities during this period, with public references to ongoing humanlike digital figure development alongside the port's broader logistics automation infrastructure, and Tiantian remained the most prominent named digital human in an operational port setting in China.

In September 2025, during the public notice period for the bank's tender, iFlytek was selected as the winning bidder for the Bank of Tianjin's New Intelligent Digital Human Platform Project at a contract value of 786,000 yuan, with a six-month implementation timeline specified. The award confirmed iFlytek's sustained role as one of Tianjin's primary external technology partners for digital human deployments across public-sector contexts, a relationship that had begun with the Intelligent Valley center opening in 2018 and had evolved through successive partnerships in media, education, and now financial services.

Around February 2026, a second Bank of Tianjin digital human project advanced through its procurement process. This project involved adding digital human and intelligent assistant functionality to the bank's online customer service platform and was awarded to Beijing Zhongke Jincai Technology (北京中科金财科技股份有限公司) at a contract value of approximately 1.198 million yuan, with the bid result confirmed shortly after the February period. The deployment target was Tianjin-based banking services, and taken together with the earlier iFlytek contract, the two Bank of Tianjin awards illustrated how Tianjin's financial sector had begun moving from exploratory exhibition toward contracted, operational digital human infrastructure — a trajectory that mirrored, in compressed form, the broader arc of the city's digital human ecosystem across the past decade.

[Mar 2026]