{"slug": "how-ai-is-helping-to-open-a-new-chapter-for-ancient-chinese-literature", "title": "How AI is helping to open a new chapter for ancient Chinese literature", "summary": "Artificial intelligence is transforming the study of ancient Chinese literature, with ByteDance and Peking University jointly developing Shidian Guji, an online database of more than 70,000 ancient works launched in 2022, now freely available to the public. The database includes modern language versions and chatbot interactions, and last month added nearly 2,000 traditional scientific works, which Sun Xianbin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said form part of China's 'indigenous knowledge system'.", "body_md": "# How AI is helping to open a new chapter for ancient Chinese literature\n\nThe technology is being used for everything from digitising rare manuscripts to helping break down barriers to understanding classical texts\n\nFor generations, working with ancient Chinese texts has been a painstaking task. Specialists would spend years deciphering unfamiliar characters, copying manuscripts by hand, adding punctuation to texts written without it, comparing different editions and tracing references scattered across thousands of years of records.\n\nBut artificial intelligence is now changing that process, not only by helping to preserve fragile manuscripts but also by transforming how ancient texts are recovered, studied and shared.\n\nAs China accelerates its efforts to digitise a vast collection of ancient works, universities, technology companies and volunteers are taking part in a nationwide effort to turn the country’s rich literary heritage – once largely the preserve of specialists – into an open digital resource.\n\nAn example of how this works in practice is Shidian Guji, an online database of more than 70,000 ancient works, all of them freely available to the public, that was launched in 2022 and jointly developed by ByteDance and Peking University.\n\nThe database provides tools for organising, searching and reading classical works, including modern language versions of classical texts and chatbot-based interactions that help users to explore them.\n\nLast month, it published a collection of almost 2,000 traditional scientific works covering fields such as astronomy, mathematics, agriculture and engineering.\n\nSun Xianbin, a researcher at the Institute for the History of Natural Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Shangguan News the digital archive contained centuries of accumulated knowledge and formed part of China’s “indigenous knowledge system”.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/how-ai-is-helping-to-open-a-new-chapter-for-ancient-chinese-literature", "canonical_source": "https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3363939/how-ai-helping-open-new-chapter-ancient-chinese-literature?utm_source=rss_feed", "published_at": "2026-08-14 04:00:15+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-14 04:20:53.004999+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "generative-ai", "ai-products", "ai-tools"], "entities": ["ByteDance", "Peking University", "Shidian Guji", "Chinese Academy of Sciences", "Sun Xianbin", "Shangguan News"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/how-ai-is-helping-to-open-a-new-chapter-for-ancient-chinese-literature", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/how-ai-is-helping-to-open-a-new-chapter-for-ancient-chinese-literature.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/how-ai-is-helping-to-open-a-new-chapter-for-ancient-chinese-literature.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/how-ai-is-helping-to-open-a-new-chapter-for-ancient-chinese-literature.jsonld"}}