Tencent launches digital Jingdezhen porcelain adventure

Tencent has launched Digital Jingdezhen: Porcelain Craft Adventure, timed to coincide with UNESCO's listing of the Jingdezhen Handicraft Porcelain Industry Sites as a World Heritage site.

The project is part of a wider effort by the Chinese technology group to digitise records linked to Jingdezhen, a city long known for porcelain production. Using Optical Character Recognition, Natural Language Processing and knowledge graph tools, Tencent has turned scattered historical and technical material into a structured dataset.

Called the Jingdezhen Porcelain Cultural Heritage Multimodal AI Dataset, it brings together more than 30,000 documentary records, over 5,000 ceramic gene specimens and data on nearly 1,000 representative ceramic artefacts held in collections around the world. Tencent says the material is intended to support research, exhibitions, public interpretation and software built around heritage information.

One of the main challenges was the volume and variety of information collected over decades. Historical archives, craft specifications and heritage records had accumulated in different formats, making them difficult to search or connect without additional processing.

Data archive

Tencent says its system analyses, extracts and verifies information while preserving links to original sources. The approach is designed to help researchers trace the origin of individual records rather than rely solely on machine-generated summaries.

On top of the dataset, Tencent has built several tools for researchers and the public, including the Jingdezhen Ancient Ceramics Gene Database, the World Ceramics Interactive Map and the Digital Jingdezhen AI Companion.

The new game is the initiative's most public-facing element. It uses AI-assisted procedural content generation to recreate five major porcelain heritage sites and historical production scenes in digital form.

The process includes mapping town layouts and generating architectural structures, decorative details and digital pedestrians to reconstruct parts of Jingdezhen's historic environment. The aim is to give users an interactive way into the history of porcelain production, rather than present the material only through conventional catalogues or static displays.

Games and heritage

The game also includes AI digital human characters built using large language models and the Jingdezhen heritage dataset. Tencent says these characters use voice-driven facial expressions and animation systems to support interactions around historical knowledge and craft techniques.

Another feature lets users upload an image and convert it into a 3D porcelain form. Tencent says this lowers the barrier to participation by allowing users to experiment with ceramic design in a digital environment.

Tencent is also linking the heritage work to community participation through a volunteer programme called Digital Heritage Guardian (Jingdezhen), built within the Weixin ecosystem. The programme is intended to support the upkeep and stewardship of physical heritage sites by giving the public a channel for involvement.

The announcement reflects a broader trend in the use of AI for cultural preservation, as technology companies and heritage institutions work to digitise archives, document vulnerable sites and widen access to historical collections. In Jingdezhen, the focus is on preserving a tradition that remains active in working kilns while making archival material easier to use.

Jingdezhen occupies a distinct place in Chinese industrial and cultural history because of its long-standing role in porcelain production. The UNESCO inscription has brought fresh international attention to the city, and Tencent is framing its work around both preservation and public engagement.

The project also shows how entertainment products are being used as a distribution channel for heritage material. Rather than treating archives solely as a research resource, Tencent is packaging parts of the dataset into interactive formats for a wider audience.

For Tencent, the initiative spans several existing business areas, including AI, digital content and games. It also offers the group an example of how its internal technologies can be applied beyond consumer communications and entertainment.

"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 at 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," Shu said.