BoGuan turns cultural archives into travel plans, historical portraits, entertainment and products across China’s ancient capital, Xi’an.
The world’s first commercial multimodal large language model built for cultural tourism is now being used across Xi’an’s visitor economy, from planning holidays to turning tourists into Tang dynasty characters.
Called BoGuan, the specialist model was unveiled in September 2025 by Shaanxi Culture Industry Investment Group and Huawei. Its developers say it is also China’s first industry model dedicated to preserving cultural heritage. The latest development is its move into broad commercial use, with paid tourism services, digital characters, craft design and video production already generating revenue.
Most large language models are trained to answer almost anything. BoGuan has a narrower brief: know the history, art, objects and traditions of Shaanxi well enough to put them to work without dressing the Tang dynasty in the wrong century.
Its multimodal abilities allow it to work with text, photographs, audio, video, three-dimensional models and other forms of content. That makes it useful for tourists, museums, filmmakers and artisans, rather than serving only as another box waiting for typed questions.
The model was trained on more than 1.2 petabytes of data. The collection includes 31-million images, 4.4-million minutes of video, 2.18-million minutes of audio, 510 3D models and 960-million pieces of structured text.
That is a sizeable memory bank for a city with plenty to remember.
Xi’an served as the capital of 13 Chinese dynasties and marked the eastern end of the ancient Silk Road. It is best known internationally for the Terracotta Warriors, but its tourism trade also draws heavily on imperial architecture, traditional crafts, food and performances.
BoGuan gives those attractions an AI layer built around Xi’an’s own cultural records.
Ask the brown panda
Its most widely used tourism application is an AI companion called Xiaoqi, modelled on Qizai, a rare brown giant panda associated with Shaanxi.
Travellers can talk to Xiaoqi through the Go-Shaanxi app and ask it to build an itinerary, recommend performances and adjust plans while they are out exploring. The system had been made available to more than 4-million users by March 2026.
The panda can help tourists decide where to go. Another BoGuan service deals with what they might have looked like had they gone there 1,300 years earlier.
The Zhiying Camera mini programme combines visitors’ photographs with AI-generated historical settings. Paid photo services around Xi’an can place a modern traveller into a scene inspired by ancient China, complete with period clothing and scenery.
It provides a souvenir that requires less luggage space than a replica Terracotta Warrior and gives the tourist a starring role.
The commercial element is central to BoGuan’s claim as a tourism model. Its applications are designed to sell services and products alongside their cultural and educational uses.
History becomes a character
BoGuan was used to develop Tang Biaobiao, a cartoon character inspired by regional heritage and the stone carvings of the Six Steeds of Zhao Mausoleum.
Digital collectibles and creative products based on the character have generated more than CNY2-million in sales, equivalent to about R4.8-million at current exchange rates. The model is also being used in Xi’an’s short-drama industry, where producers draw on it to develop culturally grounded material and speed up production.
This offers a glimpse of where specialist LLMs may find a business case beyond office software.
A general model can suggest a sightseeing route or generate a picture of an emperor. A model trained on a specific region’s archives can connect those functions to museums, tour operators, performers, souvenir makers and local media producers.
It can also help preserve skills that are difficult to capture in conventional databases.
BoGuan generates visual material for traditional crafts, allowing artisans to test ideas before committing to a physical design. It can create variations based on historic objects and styles, while the craftsperson chooses what deserves to be made by hand.
The technology does not carry out the delicate work itself. In the case of dough sculpture artist Zhang Beiyuan, it cuts the long design and preparation stage.
The physical sculpture still needs an artisan who knows what to do with the dough.
Says Zhang: “With this model, I can complete a dough sculpture that used to take two or three months in less than a week.”