World's first commercial multimodal LLM for cultural tourism broadly adopted in Xi'an

Source: Huawei. The world's first commercial multimodal LLM for cultural tourism, BoGuan, is powering the preservation of cultural heritage in one of China's oldest cities, Xi'an.

The world's first commercial multimodal large language model (LLM) for cultural tourism, BoGuan, is now broadly adopted in one of China's oldest cities, Xi'an. This model generates commercial returns by supporting the creation of digital intellectual property (IP) for intangible cultural heritage, the development of cultural tourism applications, and the improvement of short drama production. This is injecting new momentum into both China's heritage preservation initiatives and the cultural tourism industry.

Xi'an is a popular international tourist destination. Shaanxi Culture Industry Investment Group (SCG) is working with partners like Huawei, China Telecom Shaanxi, and China West Airport Group (CWAG) to promote cultural tourism in the city using digital technologies including AI and 5G-A. For example, BoGuan is used to support a new AI travel companion agent that had been made available to over 4 million users by March of this year.

In September 2025, SCG and Huawei unveiled the BoGuan Large Model, the world's first commercial multimodal LLM for cultural tourism. It is also China's first industry-specific model dedicated to the preservation of cultural heritage. This model is built on intelligent computing infrastructure and a high-quality dataset. The dataset has over 1.2 PB of data, including 31 million images, 4.4 million minutes of video footage, 2.18 million minutes of audio recordings, 510 3D models, and 960 million pieces of structured text.

BoGuan can generate highly-accurate multimodal content, such as museum-quality content about cultural relics. This allows it to support the creation of new digital relic presentations, the digitalisation and preservation of traditional craftsmanship, and the creation of digital IP for intangible cultural heritage. 

Zhang Beiyuan, a dough sculpture artisan, said: "With this model, I can complete a dough sculpture that used to take two or three months in less than a week." 

BoGuan is also used to create digital IP like the popular cartoon character Tang Biaobiao, which is designed by integrating local cultural heritage elements with the stone carvings of the Six Steeds of Zhao Mausoleum. The sales of related digital collectibles and creative products have exceeded RMB2 million.

Besides supporting the preservation of cultural heritage, BoGuan has been used to develop a range of cultural tourism apps, such as AI photography and an AI travel companion agent. Visitors can directly talk with this agent on the GO-SHAANXI app to create and adjust travel itineraries and get real-time performance recommendations at attractions. 

The Zhiying Camera mini program provides paid services that instantly integrate user photos with AI-generated scenes from history, allowing visitors to "travel back to ancient times." These new consumption options unlock the business value of quality cultural tourism data. Furthermore, SCG is using BoGuan to integrate short drama production with cultural tourism and improve production efficiency and quality in Xi'an, which is also a short drama hub.

Additionally, China Telecom Shaanxi and Huawei have deployed a 5G-A network based on three component carrier aggregation (3CC) technology at Xi'an's Grand Tang Mall, a popular tourist attraction. The network delivers peak uplink and downlink rates of 600 Mbps and 3.5 Gbps, respectively, about 10x faster than common 5G networks. 

During the 2026 May Day holiday, this network supported concurrent access for 23,000 users, guaranteeing smooth video watching and social media experiences. 5G-A-powered HD live streaming at the Grand Tang Mall has become an important way for the attraction to bring in new visitors. According to public data, the average user dwell time of these live streams has nearly doubled and the average transaction value has increased by 62%.

Edric Chu, GM, Huawei's Shaanxi Rep Office said: "Artificial intelligence is not simply a stack of technologies. It has become a key enabler that can activate thousands of years of cultural heritage, reshape travel experiences, and inject new momentum into the industry. Moving forward, Huawei will continue working with our partners to enhance cultural heritage preservation with digital and intelligent technologies, and stimulate development within the cultural tourism industry."