AI brings Qin back to life

Zhang led a young team specializing in visual programming, and with support from the local government and experts in archaeology and history, the team employed AIGC technology to transform the texts on the Qin slips into a series of dynamic, intuitive videos. By scanning QR codes at the park, visitors are offered an immersive experience of the social landscape of the region in the Qin era.

All the scenes, clothing and artifacts in the videos are based on historical documents and archaeological findings, Zhang said.

Magistrate Hua's clothing, for example, was partly inspired by artifacts unearthed from the Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site in Shaanxi province.

This posed a huge challenge for the team members without an academic background in history, Zhang said. Before writing a single line of code, the team needed to immerse itself in archaeological reports and academic papers on the Liye Qin slips, gathering every detail available.

"We extracted these extremely fine 'data granules' from the documents, using them as key parameters to feed and train our AI models, which became the basis for our visual design," Zhang said.

When designing the archaeological site park's main signage, the team decided to turn directly to the ancient source. Rather than using standard typefaces, they recreated the font for the Chinese characters for "Liye Ancient Town Archaeological Site" from those on the Qin slips.