ITRI TODAY Fall issue 2025

AI-Powered Hyper-Realistic Technology Brings New Life to Art

The wave of Gen AI is sweeping across all industries, extending from smart manufacturing, logistics, and healthcare to creative industries. The art world, embracing this transformation, is experiencing an unprecedented revolution.

ITRI has partnered with the National Palace Museum to create “City Scroll: Unfolding Timeless Landscapes,” a new media exhibition featuring 48 classic artworks. By combining AI dynamic generation with hyper-realistic display technology, this collaboration reinterprets urban landscapes and cultural spirit, delivering an immersive interactive experience that merges technology with art.

Through ITRI’s GAI Stylized Animation Generation, the project breaks through traditional static artwork presentation formats. Works from the National Palace Museum and other collection institutions in Taiwan bring landscapes and figures created by Taiwanese artists such as Chen Cheng-Po, Kuo Hsueh-Hu, and Huang Tu-Shui to life through flowing imagery that resonates with contemporary discourse. The exhibition encompasses diverse media including landscape paintings, gouache, ink wash, and oil paintings. It cleverly embeds modern imagery such as Taipei 101, fireworks, and semiconductor fabrication plants, allowing century-old masterpieces to regain their splendor through AI’s brush.

Jen-Chieh Cheng, ITRI Vice President and General Director of the Service Systems Technology Center, stated that the collaboration demonstrated the technical capabilities of Gen AI in content production, showcasing an innovative example of tech integration with cultural assets. “Previously, AI was primarily used as an auxiliary tool,” he said. “In this project, the National Palace Museum participated in artwork selection and curation, working with art consultants and new media directors to collaboratively arrange animation rhythm and visual style, making AI part of the narrative that dances with art.”

The exhibition’s technical core derives from three major AI applications developed by ITRI:

• GAI Stylized Animation Generation: Can generate smooth and natural animated scenes based on painter styles and themes, breaking through the traditional animation bottleneck of difficulty in capturing artistic brushstrokes.
• GenVFX-SuperRes Collective Intelligence Super-Resolution Algorithm: Enhances image resolution, allowing delicate brushstrokes and paint textures to be authentically reproduced in 8K imagery.
• 6DoF Dynamic Camera Movement and Dark Scene Human Detection: Supports audience interaction and perspective adjustment, creating an immersive artistic perception experience.

Combined with AUO’s FindARTs 85-inch 8K hyper-realistic art screen and Advanced Reflectionless Technology (A.R.T.), even in on-site lighting environments, audiences can clearly perceive image depth and light-shadow changes, experiencing the emotion of being before authentic masterpieces.

“Technology isn’t just an aid; it can become a creative medium for culture,” said Cheng. “This time, we’re not converting paintings into animations, but extending stories and presenting dialogue between history and contemporary times right before our eyes.”

For example, ITRI’s team learned the style of Kuo Hsueh-Hu’s painting Festival on South Street, seamlessly integrating Taipei 101 into the painting. They also used classic artifacts from the National Palace Museum as layered style references for various trades and professions, depicting the daily life of modern technology factories and creating urban scrolls that transcend time and space.

Looking forward, ITRI will continue to advance the fusion of technology and art, expanding AI’s impact beyond manufacturing, positioning it as a leading force in cultural technology and content industries.