Alibaba and Partners Launch ‘Ancient Murals Glow’ AI Project to Digitally Reconstruct Millennia-Old Frescoes

A new initiative blending advanced artificial intelligence with cultural heritage conservation was unveiled at the D20 Global Design Dean Summit on July 11, 2026. The ‘Ancient Murals Glow’ Ancient Mural AI Reconstruction Project, spearheaded by the Alibaba Design Committee and supported by Alibaba Foundation, Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts, AiZhidao, Wanxiang, and Duiyou, aims to digitally resurrect the faded glory of ancient Chinese wall paintings.

Officials stressed that the project is not a physical intervention. “AI is not ‘repairing’ the murals—murals are immovable cultural relics, and any physical intervention must be extremely cautious,” the announcement read. “What AI does is a digital reconstruction. It’s not surgery on the wall, but a ‘second-creation snapshot’ of what the wall would look like if it could return to its youth.”

The project’s first subject is the Vimalakirti Sutra Illustration inside the Amitabha Hall of Dayun Temple in Pingshun County, Shanxi. This is the only surviving Five Dynasties (907–960 AD) temple mural in China, bridging the artistic gap between late-Tang Dunhuang frescoes and Northern Song scroll paintings—a priceless primary source for studying the evolution of painting styles during that period. After more than a millennium of exposure, the mural suffers from severe weathering, fading colors, and areas of illegibility.

Using the Wan 2.7-Image model, AiZhidao’s AI skill identifies and removes weathering traces, infers missing compositional elements, and generates color-vibrant second-creation images that faithfully respect the original artistic style. The process unfolds in stages: first, the AI system was trained to become a full-fledged expert on the mural’s historical and artistic context. “In the first phase, we made this AI skill learn all the specialized knowledge of the mural,” said Zhang Li, Dean of the School of Design Art at Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts. “Now it is already a mural expert.”

That expert skill has been uploaded to the Duiyou platform and is now openly available to mural professionals across China, democratizing access to cutting-edge digital reconstruction tools. The second phase, already partially completed, shows the AI’s output: vivid, detailed reconstructions that bring the ancient narrative back to life.

Local authorities in Pingshun have indicated that once the digital restoration work is finished, a dedicated exhibition area will be set up within Dayun Temple itself. Visitors will then be able to see the Vimalakirti Sutra Illustration not just as a faded relic, but in its resplendent, youthful form—a marriage of heritage and technology that preserves the past for future generations.