- Tencent applies AI and games to protect, reconstruct, and promote one of the world's oldest porcelain traditions at newly inscribed UNESCO site
- Digital initiatives create a new model for technology-driven heritage preservation globally using a multimodal AI dataset, AI-assisted artifact restoration, and interactive virtual experiences
-- Tencent (00700.HK) today announced the launch of Digital Jingdezhen: Porcelain Craft Adventure, an AI-powered cultural heritage game that enables users to explore Jingdezhen's porcelain-making traditions and experience traditional craft techniques through interactive play. The launch coincides with the inscription of the Jingdezhen Handicraft Porcelain Industry Sites on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage List.
Digital Jingdezhen is part of a broader cultural innovation initiative that applies Tencent's AI and game technologies. Guided by Tencent's vision of "Tech for Good", the initiative leverages digital preservation to keep Jingdezhen's thousand-year-old porcelain culture alive and relevant today, creating a living heritage with sustainable value and broad public engagement, and building a model that could be carried to heritage sites around the world.
Digital Preservation: Restoring and Unlocking Heritage with AI
Jingdezhen has a thousand years of living heritage; centuries of tradition are still active in its kilns today. To preserve this legacy, a cornerstone of the project was the Jingdezhen Porcelain Cultural Heritage Multimodal AI Dataset.
Over decades, historical records, heritage information, and craft specifications have accumulated into a massive volume of data. Tencent applied Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Natural Language Processing (NLP), and knowledge graph technologies to transform these dispersed materials into structured digital resources that can be analyzed, extracted, verified, and traced back to their original sources.
The dataset contains more than 30,000 documentary records, over 5,000 ceramic gene specimens, and data on nearly 1,000 representative ceramic artifacts in collections worldwide. It provides a digital foundation for cultural research, exhibition development, public interpretation and AI-powered heritage applications.
Building on this foundation, Tencent has developed a range of industry- and public-facing applications, including the Jingdezhen Ancient Ceramics Gene Database, the World Ceramics Interactive Map, and the Digital Jingdezhen AI Companion, providing researchers, heritage professionals, and the public with innovative AI-powered tools to explore and understand porcelain heritage.
Digital Activation: Bringing Jingdezhen's Porcelain Heritage to Life Through AI and Games
To bring the public closer to Jingdezhen and its porcelain-making traditions, Digital Jingdezhen: Porcelain Craft Adventure utilizes AI-assisted Procedural Content Generation (PCG) to create the first large-scale digital recreation of the city's five major porcelain heritage sites and historical production scenes. By rapidly mapping out town layouts and automatically generating architectural structures, decorative elements, and pedestrians, the technology brings Jingdezhen's historic townscape back to life in the digital world.
The game also features high-quality AI digital humans built on large language models and the Jingdezhen Porcelain Cultural Heritage Multimodal AI Dataset. Through AI voice-driven facial expressions and Tencent Games' proprietary animation technology, it creates warm, human-centered interactive experiences that make historical knowledge tangible and relatable. At the same time, AI-powered 3D generation allows users to quickly transform an uploaded image into a 3D porcelain form, lowering the barrier to participation and enabling anyone to turn creative inspiration into tangible ceramic forms in the digital space.
Continuing Heritage: Mobilizing the Community
Ensuring the longevity of Jingdezhen's legacy requires active public participation. Tencent developed the Digital Heritage Guardian (Jingdezhen), a volunteer program built within the Weixin ecosystem. The program enables the public to support the upkeep and stewardship of physical heritage sites, creating a practical channel for community involvement in heritage protection.
"Our work in Jingdezhen is a testament to how 'AI for Good' can breathe new life into ancient traditions," said Zhan Shu, Head of Digital Culture Lab, Tencent. "Working alongside dedicated heritage experts, we have contributed our capabilities in AI and digital technologies to unlock decades of dormant archives for this incredible new UNESCO site. We are proud to help bridge the gap between the thousand-year porcelain heritage and the digital era, creating new ways for the global public to connect with Jingdezhen's living history, and a model for heritage sites worldwide."
For media queries, please contact: gc@tencent.com
About Tencent
Tencent is a global technology and entertainment company focused on creating connections and experiences that matter. Founded in 1998, Tencent is driven by its mission to create "Value for Users" and apply "Tech for Good."
