Recently, the 2025 World Artificial Intelligence Conference was held in Shanghai, and our school's intangible cultural heritage digital innovation achievements were showcased in the “When AI Meets Intangible Cultural Heritage” themed exhibition area, jointly created by the World Artificial Intelligence Conference Organizing Committee and the Shanghai Science and Technology Art Education Center. The first “When AI Meets Intangible Cultural Heritage” student-themed activity study camp kicked off on the 27th at the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition Center. The themed exhibition area served as both an important practical setting for the study camp and a showcase for the outstanding achievements of the student-themed activities. Shadow puppetry, button-making, paper-cutting, Jinshan farmer paintings... each piece shone with the brilliance of youthful creativity and cultural heritage.
(The “When AI Meets Intangible Cultural Heritage” themed exhibition area debuts at the 2025 World Artificial Intelligence Conference)
This event features a dedicated zone for innovative displays and interactive experiences. The “AI Cheongsam” interactive experience zone, created by the Cultural Heritage Innovation Center team from our university's College of Fashion and Art Design, received a enthusiastic response on-site. Professor Liu Hui, the team leader, stated that the integration of technology and tradition has opened up new pathways for the inheritance of intangible cultural heritage. The team is committed to utilizing digital and intelligent methods to revitalize the contemporary vitality of cultural heritage, enabling millennia-old techniques to shine with new brilliance in the intelligent era. At the exhibition area, visitors can select distinctive elements from nearly a thousand data sets—such as collars, lapels, sleeves, buttons, and patterns—to design a unique cheongsam for their mothers using AI technology. After completing the design, scanning a QR code generates a video of the mother walking the runway in the cheongsam. This innovative practice not only makes intangible cultural heritage techniques tangible and accessible but also builds a bridge for intergenerational cultural transmission through emotional design, enabling traditional clothing culture to achieve creative transformation and innovative development through digital and intelligent interaction.
Dr. Shen Zhiyun, a doctoral candidate in the College of Fashion and Art Design, is a member of the Cultural Heritage Innovation Center team at Donghua University. She is responsible for establishing the academic foundation for the interactive system of the “When AI Meets Intangible Cultural Heritage – AI Cheongsam” project, tracing the historical evolution and cultural significance of elements such as the collar, sleeves, neckline, and button closures of the cheongsam. When she saw audiences using AI technology to design unique cheongsam for their mothers and generate runway videos, Shen Zhiyun's sense of surprise and emotion was indescribable. She said, “The ‘When AI Meets Intangible Cultural Heritage’ initiative is a cutting-edge innovative endeavor. We use academic research to safeguard the ‘roots’ of tradition and leverage intelligent technology to give it the ‘wings’ to soar. We hope to collaborate with more partners in the future, enabling this millennia-old craftsmanship to achieve the most heartfelt innovative inheritance in the era of technological advancement.”
(At the Donghua University “AI Cheongsam” exhibition area)
Among the numerous outstanding exhibition works selected nationwide, Wei Xuan, a master's student from the College of Fashion and Art Design at Donghua University, stood out with her work “Luminous Craft” captivating audiences with its striking visual impact and innovative design, evoking emotional resonance. "Learning that my work will be showcased to the public at the ‘AI Meets Intangible Cultural Heritage’ exhibition zone of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, I feel deeply honored. This honor not only recognizes the work itself but also the promotion of intangible cultural heritage glass art and the preservation of its unique craftsmanship. The ‘fragility’ of intangible cultural heritage glassware collides with the ‘eternality’ of AI technology, thereby opening up new possibilities for the inheritance of intangible cultural heritage. This allows people to focus on the essence and connotation of intangible cultural heritage through video and other forms, achieving the transition from ‘visible’ to ‘alive’ in its inheritance." Wei Xuan told the reporter.
(Work “Luminous Craft”)
As one of the co-organizers of the first “When AI Meets Intangible Cultural Heritage” student-themed event, Donghua University has consistently played a leading role as a university think tank, leveraging artificial intelligence technology to empower the protection and innovation of traditional intangible cultural heritage, and promoting the deep integration of science and technology with culture. In the future, the university will continue to deepen industry-academia-research collaboration, establish an intelligent intangible cultural heritage inheritance platform, and explore innovative applications of AI technology in areas such as cultural excavation, skill inheritance, and creative design, injecting technological momentum into the living inheritance of intangible cultural heritage. By cultivating composite talents with both digital literacy and cultural heritage, the university will assist in the creative transformation of traditional culture in the digital age, contributing Donghua's wisdom to global AI development and the protection of cultural diversity.
