In November 2023, MoFa Technology (魔珐科技) and Yunnan Tengyun Information Industry Co., Ltd. (云 南腾云信息产业有限公司) partnered to advance an artificial-intelligence virtual human cultural and tourism demonstration initiative with an explicit focus on Yunnan-oriented digital cultural tourism. The collaboration centred on building out 3D virtual human capabilities for cultural and tourism scenarios, and on organising training and service capacity around virtual humans so that Yunnan-facing deployments could move from concept work into repeatable delivery.
In March 2024, the development of digital humans in Yunnan began to show up as a visible part of the province’s broader AI showcase activity when Kunming hosted the 2024 China Internet Media Forum and exhibited multiple AI projects, explicitly including digital human technology among the highlighted directions. Although the forum presentation was not itself a single commercial launch, it functioned as a Yunnan-located convening point that helped normalise digital humans as a practical, demonstrable technology category for media and public-facing applications in the provincial capital.
In July 2024, Yunnan Construction and Investment Holding Group Co., Ltd. (云南省建设投资控股集团有限 公司) used a major Kunming exhibition setting to put a client-facing digital employee concept into view by unveiling the AI digital human “Zhumeng.” The appearance of “Zhumeng” at the China–South Asia Expo in Kunming linked a provincial state-owned enterprise with enterprise-software infrastructure, with DingTalk (钉钉) positioned as a key technology collaborator for enabling the digital human deployment in a way that could be presented to business and government audiences in Yunnan.
In September 2024, BlueOcean Creative Cloud (蓝海创意云) and Yunnan Meteorological Bureau (云南省 气象局) launched the AI digital weather host “Wen Fei,” describing it as the first AI digital weather anchor in the province’s meteorological communication context. In the same month, Dali’s digital human trajectory became more visibly culture-facing when “Dali Xiaojinhua” debuted at a film-week setting associated with Dali; this activity was presented as a local-government-led effort developed with support from a digital operations company, and it explicitly tied the digital human format to Yunnan’s place-based cultural branding rather than to a purely online, location-agnostic virtual character strategy.
In January 2025, Tencent Cloud Intelligence (腾讯云智能) delivered a broadcast-oriented digital human deployment in Yunnan by creating the 3D digital human “Xiao Caiyun” for Yunnan Radio and Television Station (云南广播电视台). The deployment was framed around combining digital human production with large-model capabilities for broadcasting workflows, positioning “Xiao Caiyun” as a Yunnan-based, client-facing media character intended to operate as part of a modernised production and presentation stack rather than as a standalone entertainment avatar.
In February 2025, China Unicom (中国联通) applied digital human modelling and AI voice replication to produce a virtual image of the Naxi singer “Dapo Maji,” explicitly linking digital human techniques to the preservation and presentation of ethnic music identified with Yunnan’s cultural landscape. In the same month, SenseTime (商汤科技) won a bid connected to smart-infrastructure construction for Kunming, and while this was not described as a digital-human product release, it was treated as part of the city’s wider push toward AI-enabled digital transformation conditions that would materially support publicsector and commercial deployments, including embodied virtual agents, inside Yunnan.
In March 2025, Kunming’s consumer-facing use of digital humans broadened into financial publiceducation and compliance communication when an AI digital human image was displayed in the city for a financial consumer-protection campaign. The activity was organised around multiple digital human representatives serving as a visual and interactive conveyance for policy messaging, making the digitalhuman form factor part of Yunnan’s on-the-ground public communication toolkit rather than leaving it confined to media studios or enterprise showcases.
In April 2025, Yunnan Network (云南网) released “Yun Shiyang,” presented as Yunnan’s first virtual digital human and, more specifically, as the first virtual digital human native to the province. This positioned the province’s digital-human narrative around a locally rooted character identity and suggested a shift from primarily project-based demonstrations toward a province-branded virtual persona that could be sustained across multiple content and promotional contexts.
In May 2025, Yunnan’s digital human story was also communicated outward through investment-facing activity when the Yunnan Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Conference convened in Hangzhou and showcased achievements that included 3D digital humans alongside broader AI and generative-AI progress. Because this convening occurred outside Yunnan, its relevance lay in how Yunnan’s ecosystem and outputs were packaged for cross-regional capital and partnership attention, rather than in Yunnanlocated deployment activity.
In June 2025, the province’s most direct public-service integration described in the research occurred when Yunnan’s medical insurance public service platform incorporated AI digital human technology into its service system. The integration emphasised operational use in public-facing service delivery, combining capabilities such as voice interaction, human–computer interaction, and the inclusion of virtual digital humans within an insurance-service workflow, indicating a move from digital humans as communicators and presenters toward digital humans as interfaces for government-linked service access in Yunnan.
In July 2025, Yunnan’s education-to-industry linkages around digital humans were reinforced when Yunnan Tourism Vocational College (云南旅游职业学院) visited Baidu Smart Cloud (百度智能云) at the Baidu Smart Cloud (Guangnan) Digital Economy Industrial Base to explore digital human applications relevant to tourism-facing work. In the same month, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Kunming Branch (中国工商银行昆明分行) launched the AI intelligent assistant “Yun Xiaozhu” for legal consultation services, explicitly grounding a digital-human-enabled service function inside a major financial institution’s Kunming operations rather than treating digital humans only as promotional assets. July 2025 also reflected the continued expansion of digital humans into commercial branding and traceability narratives when a launch event in Kunming introduced the “Xiaoyuan” AI Digital Human Project as part of the “Funeng Seven-Color Yunnan Traceability Journey,” framing a digital human as a visible interface for product-storytelling and market-facing trust signals. In the same month, “Cloud Poetry Yang” was presented as Yunnan’s first virtual digital human in a commerce-and-content context, with plans to use original music and livestreaming to promote highland specialty agricultural products, indicating that virtual persona design was being aligned with the province’s characteristic-product marketing channels rather than remaining limited to institutional deployments.
In August 2025, the research characterised Yunnan as having consolidated into a province in which digital humans were no longer isolated showcases but part of a linked set of applied practices spanning digital tourism, media, and public service, with an emphasis on embodied avatar technologies such as computer graphics, motion capture, speech synthesis, and deep learning as enabling foundations. Within Kunming specifically, the research described wide cross-sector adoption and highlighted the AI digital human “Wen Yiduo” created by Silicon-based Intelligence (硅基智能) as an example of an educationally framed avatar used for dialogue-style interaction, while also noting that public-service digital employees were being deployed in governance-linked contexts and that local institutions were applying digital humans in scientific education and medical simulation. By this point in the narrative, the province’s digital-human development had also become associated with recurrent exhibition settings and with a growing population of enterprises and start-ups aiming to adapt virtual avatar formats to marketing, education, livestreaming, and sector-specific service models in Yunnan’s distinctive linguistic and cultural environment.
In September 2025, Yunnan’s digital-human development gained a highly public, Yunnan-located security-and-governance demonstration moment when the AI digital human “Chunxiao” was showcased in Kunming as part of a major cybersecurity exposition setting framed around “Digital Yunnan” and “Digital Kunming” outcomes. The showcased implementation explicitly positioned “Chunxiao” as a continuously available, human-presenting digital officer for public interaction, and it described a joint build relationship between China Mobile Yunnan (中国移动云南公司) and the Kunming public security system, emphasising both on-site interaction hardware and online service channels as part of the Yunnan deployment footprint. In the same month, the application of virtual humans to culturalheritage-scale visitor and governance environments in Yunnan was further evidenced when China Unicom’s Yunnan operations were described as using virtual human methods among multiple tools within the Lijiang Old Town visual operation management platform, tying the digital-human concept to day-to-day heritage-area governance, visitor experience, and fine-grained operational management inside a flagship Yunnan tourism destination.
[Feb 2026]
2025
July 31, 2025: Cloud Poetry Yang – Yunnan’s first virtual digital human plans to release an original song, perform ethnic dance, commentate competitions, host events, and livestream for Yunnan’s highland specialty agricultural products.
July 25, 2025: Xiaoyuan AI Digital Human Project – Launch event for Funeng Seven-Color Yunnan Traceability Journey held with partners from across the country gathering in Kunming.
July 20, 2025: Industrial and Commercial Bank Kunming Branch – AI intelligent assistant “Yun Xiaozhu” launched for legal consultation services using digital human technology.
July 4, 2025: Yunnan Tourism Vocational College – Information Engineering School visited Baidu Smart Cloud (Guangnan) Digital Economy Industrial Base to explore digital human applications in the metaverse.
June 25, 2025: Yunnan Medical Insurance – AI digital human technology introduced to the provincial medical insurance public service platform for intelligent processing.
June 19, 2025: Yunnan Medical Insurance Public Service Platform – Partnered with AI to integrate intelligent voice, human-computer interaction, medical insurance large language models and virtual digital humans.
May 23, 2025: Yunnan Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Conference – Shared achievements in AI robots, 3D digital humans and generative AI technologies in Hangzhou.
April 18, 2025: Yunnan Network – Officially released Yunnan’s first virtual digital human “Yun Shiyang”.
March 17, 2025: Yunnan Financial Consumer Protection – AI digital human image displayed publicly for the first time during the “3·15” financial consumer rights protection education campaign in Kunming, featuring 6 digital human representatives.
February 19, 2025: SenseTime Technology – Won bid to build smart infrastructure for Kunming, injecting strong momentum into digital transformation for Kunming and entire Yunnan Province.
February 16, 2025: China Unicom – Used AI technology to empower ethnic music inheritance, generating virtual image of Naxi singer Dapo Maji through high-precision digital human modeling and AI voice replication technology.
January 2, 2025: Tencent Cloud Intelligence – Created 3D digital human “Xiao Caiyun” for Yunnan Radio and Television Station, combining digital human and large model technology for broadcasting.
2024
September 8, 2024: BlueOcean Creative Cloud and Yunnan Meteorological Bureau launched the AI digital host “Wen Fei,” marking the first AI digital weather host in the country.
September 8, 2024: The virtual digital human “Dali Xiaojinhua” made her debut at the 2024 “Colorful China” Dali National Film Week (September 5-9), developed by the Dali government and a digital operations company.
July 30, 2024: Yunnan Construction and Investment Group, in collaboration with DingTalk, unveiled their AI digital human “Zhumeng” at the 8th China-South Asia Expo held in Kunming from July 23-28.
April 2, 2024: The 2024 China Internet Media Forum took place in Kunming City, Yunnan Province, from March 30-31, highlighting digital human technology among 14 AI projects showcased.
2023
November 20, 2023: MoFa Technology and Yunnan Tengyun Information Industry Co., Ltd. entered into a strategic partnership to create China’s first national AI virtual human cultural and tourism demonstration project, focusing on 3D virtual human digital cultural tourism including scenic tour guide training and services.