Turning to AI for inspiration

On an early September night, thousands gathered at a concert in Shanghai not to see a human celebrity but the artificial intelligence-generated artist Yuri.

The singer, China's first virtual AI idol to receive official digital avatar certification from a Beijing district, completed her first offline live global performance on Sept 11, as part of the AI Art Festival during the 2026 Inclusion Conference on the Bund.

Yuri performed solo songs and also shared the stage with the Chinese indie folk duo The Landlord's Cat, a children's choir and traditional folk musicians.

Yuri sang, spoke, smiled, danced, and interacted with the audience like a human. Bringing her presence off-screen to a live, in-person experience, Yuri wowed and impressed audiences on stage.

Born last June, Yuri has garnered nearly 800,000 followers on social media platforms, and her debut single Surreal has been streamed over 11 million times so far. She is also believed to be the first generative singer to secure commercial partnerships with top brands in the gaming, technology and fashion sectors.

Unlike traditional virtual idols, Yuri is not simply a replica of a real person; she has gradually developed her own unique style and personality through ongoing music creation, video generation, and interactions with the real world, according to Zhao Hanqing, Yuri's creator and the founder of AI.Talk.

Zhao says that Yuri generated many of the performance designs and interactive conversations with people at the concert, which also surprised the production team. What touched them more that night was the real emotional connection between Yuri, the human performers and the audience.

"The value of AI lies not only in more efficient content production, but also in exploring new formats unique to AI. When an AI — devoid of a childhood or biological family — begins to discuss growth, confusion and choices, it also offers humans a new perspective from which to understand themselves and their emotions," says Zhao.

Zhang Youhong, producer of the AI Art Festival, describes the concert and the festival as an "experiment". She notes that continuously deepening the integration of technology with the humanities and arts is redefining the relationship between humans and AI. Through art, the production team hopes everyone has a chance to gain firsthand experience of these changes and better reflect on the true value of AI and human relationships.

In addition to the AI concert, the festival includes an AIGC film screening featuring more than 100 AI-generated works, showcasing AI's boundless possibilities in visual creation, as well as an AI digital art concept exhibition that explores the intertwined future of humans and AI.

Curated by an art team called ";C.Setup", the exhibition probes the shifting balance of decision-making authority between humans and AI and the blurring of boundaries between them.

The exhibition features diverse creations from over 20 digital artists worldwide. Among the artworks is the eye-catching AARON at Tsukuba, #2 19-3-85, which was independently created and signed by AARON, an AI system developed by AI art pioneer and British artist Harold Cohen (1928-2016).