At the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Guangzhou, students can listen to lectures given by AI avatars that look and talk exactly like Albert Einstein or mathematician John Nash. The avatars can even answer students’ questions.

Universities are one of many settings in China where virtual avatars are being implemented. These computer-generated figures are built using artificial intelligence tools, including video generation models and large language models (LLM), which allow them to speak and hold conversations. Some of the earliest examples were digital sellers on platforms such as the shopping website Taobao and Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.

According to a 2024 Chinese government report, more than 1.3 million companies in China offer digital avatar services. They are being used in healthcare, in education and as social companions at home, says Mengjiao Yin, a researcher who studies AI and digital humans at Wuxi Taihu University in Wuxi. Although Yin has yet to hear of any scientific avatars working in laboratories, he believes they are not far away.

AI avatars, also called digital humans, are likely to “profoundly transform” everyday life and reshape all aspects of human society, says Yang Liu, a computer scientist at Tsinghua University in Beijing. “Acting as our proxies and assistants, they will take on a wide range of tasks and greatly increase productivity,” he adds. But the technology behind digital humans still needs improvement, and the same effort will need to be put into developing standards and ethical frameworks for how AI avatars operate, Liu adds.

Faced with such widespread adoption, the government is trying to keep up. The Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s cyberspace regulator, has published rules on how virtual digital humans should be developed and used, which come into effect today. The regulations encourage the use of AI avatars across China and aim to boost collaborations between academia and digital-human technology developers. Widespread social use of AI is a priority for China and forms part of the country’s latest five-year plan for social and economic development, which was published earlier this year.

Rationalization of healthcare

Liu is part of a team at Tsinghua University that has developed a virtual hospital simulation, called Agent Hospital, that includes AI doctors, nurses and patients and is designed to train virtual doctors on how to approach diseases from diagnosis to treatment.¹.

Agent Hospital trials began in eight hospitals in China in November 2025, Liu says. Human doctors working in hospitals have personal digital avatars that help them with tasks such as writing medical notes, recommending medical tests, and proposing treatment plans. He says that despite this, human doctors in hospitals still make all decisions about a person’s care.

Separately, Hangzhou-based technology provider Ant Group last June launched an artificial intelligence-based health app, which includes digital versions of more than 1,000 real-world doctors who can answer patients’ questions. In January, the app had 30 million monthly active users, according to company documents.

Facilitate education

Computer scientist Pan Hui and his team at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Guangzhou began using AI avatars for teaching in 2024. He created ten digital teachers who taught part of a social media subject. In addition to avatars based on Einstein and Nash, the lecturers included fictional characters of different ages and nationalities, and an avatar based on Hui.

Hui says the development of AI teachers was inspired by students asking for more guest teachers to teach course content. Currently, the team uses a combination of AI speakers that are interactive or deliver content in pre-recorded videos, both of which require a lot of computing power to generate. As the technology powering AI avatars continues to improve, Hui says he sees them as personal tutors who are always available.

Digital companions

Virtual human services are also being used to boost social interactions. For example, one social networking service, called Elys, allows users to create AI clones of themselves that socialize with other avatars by commenting and liking posts, without the human user needing to be online. Some people have been using the service as a dating app to find suitable partners, Yin says.