World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC)
- Chinese name
- 世界人工智能大会
- Organizers
- Ministry of Foreign Affairs (外交部)
- National Development and Reform Commission
- China Ministry of Industry and Information Technology
- Ministry of Education of the PRC
- Ministry of Science and Technology
- State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission
- Cyberspace Administration of China
- Chinese Academy of Sciences
- China Association for Science and Technology (中国科学技术协会)
- Shanghai Municipal People's Government (上海市人民政府)
- City
- Shanghai
- Held
- July
- Cadence
- annual
- Website
- 6997075461
World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) is a large-scale AI event held in Shanghai that functions as a public showcase and industry marketplace where “digital humans” are repeatedly positioned as the most legible, customer-facing expression of applied AI. In this context, digital humans are typically presented as human-like virtual representatives embedded in booths, service counters, and demo environments to perform greeting and guidance, explain products, conduct scripted consultations, host livestream or stage-style presentations, and simulate domain roles in areas such as finance, government services, education, healthcare, and cultural exhibition. WAIC’s digital-human demonstrations tend to emphasize three practical messages: that multi-modal interaction (voice, vision, and dialogue) can be packaged into an approachable persona; that realism and expressive performance can be productized as templates rather than bespoke animation work; and that deployment is shifting toward repeatable pipelines, platforms, and hardware-integrated endpoints that support scaled rollout, localization, and integration with enterprise workflows.