Dunhuang Academy
- Chinese name
- 敦煌研究院
- Pinyin
- Unified Social Credit Code
12620000438490980Rregistered in Gansu 甘肃- Website
Exhibition and museum production · Historical-figure revival
Dunhuang Academy (敦煌研究院), the public institution responsible for the Mogao Grottoes and other Gansu cave-temple World Heritage sites, operates the official virtual human Gayo (伽瑶). Created with Tencent through the Cultural Heritage Digital Creative Technology Joint Laboratory established on 15 June 2022, Gayo takes her form from the Kalavinka (迦陵频伽), the sweet-voiced mythical bird of the Mogao murals, with dress and ornament drawn from Cave 217 and other grotto paintings. She was unveiled as the first digital Dunhuang culture ambassador, performing Dunhuang dance at the laboratory’s launch, and has since served as the first digital guide of the “Cloud Tour Dunhuang” (云游敦煌) mini-program, delivered multilingual festival greetings on CGTN broadcasts, appeared on CCTV’s «Poetry and Painting China», and anchored the academy’s own “Typical / Highland” achievement exhibition in September 2025. Her AI-generated work on Dunhuang’s twenty-four solar terms, synthesised from analysis of tens of thousands of murals and Library Cave documents, has won recognition. Gayo has her own Baidu Baike entry.