Gen-Diaolou: An Integrated AI-Assisted Interactive System for Diachronic Understanding and Preservation of the Kaiping Diaolou

An AI-assisted interactive system, Gen-Diaolou, demonstrates significant potential to enhance visitors' diachronic understanding and preservation awareness of the UNESCO-listed Kaiping Diaolou and Villages. This hybrid Chinese-Western architectural heritage site, shaped by migration culture, faces challenges in engagement due to authenticity debates and limited participatory approaches. Through formative studies with 14 stakeholders, pilot tests with 18 participants, and museum field studies involving 26 individuals, the system was designed and refined. Findings suggest that Gen-Diaolou effectively bridges gaps between passive heritage systems and unconstrained creative tools, offering a promising model for human-AI collaboration in digital cultural heritage engagement.

Han, L., Gao, Y., Lu, X., Wang, B., Zhang, L., Wang, Z., & Yip, D. (2026). Gen-Diaolou: An Integrated AI-Assisted Interactive System for Diachronic Understanding and Preservation of the Kaiping Diaolou. Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3790720