Hybrid Intelligence: Creative Production, Subject Boundaries and the Reconfiguration of Cultural Order
November 27–29, 2026
USC-SJTU Institute of Cultural and Creative Industry, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Since 2018, the International Conference on Global Cultural and Creative Industries Cooperation and Development, hosted by the USC-SJTU Institute of Cultural and Creative Industry at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, has been successfully held for seven editions. The conference has consistently focused on frontier issues in the development of global cultural and creative industries. Around themes such as the integration of technology and art, cultural value, digital civilization, and new ecosystems of cultural creativity, it has built an interdisciplinary, international, and open platform for academic exchange. The conference brings together scholars and practitioners from China and abroad in fields including cultural industries, communication, management, design, art, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, computer science, digital humanities, cultural heritage, and creative practice, with the aim of jointly exploring new trends, new questions, and new pathways in the development of cultural and creative industries.
In 2026, the USC-SJTU Institute of Cultural and Creative Industry will host the 8th International Conference on Global Cultural and Creative Industries Cooperation and Development. Under the theme “Hybrid Intelligence: Creative Production, Subject Boundaries and the Reconfiguration of Cultural Order” this conference focuses on the new questions opened up by the deep involvement of artificial intelligence in cultural and creative industries.
A new generation of artificial intelligence is entering everyday life and cultural-creative sites through its capacities to converse, respond, advise, accompany, and generate. It is becoming a new form of participant in cultural expression, social interaction, and value judgment. Creative activity is shifting from a process centered on a single creative subject toward a composite process in which human creators, intelligent systems, platform mechanisms, institutional organizations, and social publics participate together and mutually shape one another. As human experience, machine generativity, platform distribution logics, organizational value judgments, and public reception become increasingly intertwined, many questions that once appeared self-evident have become open again: Where does creativity come from? How should authorship be defined? Who makes judgments? How should responsibility be assigned? How is cultural value recognized?
“Hybrid intelligence” is the core issue emerging from this context. It refers not only to collaboration between humans and machines, but also to the mutual reorganization of human-AI relations and human-human relations, the reciprocal embedding of technical systems and social structures, and the reordering of cultural production. The technological imaginaries, institutional arrangements, and industrial practices formed around AI are together shaping a new cultural order.
Within this overall framework, the conference seeks to discuss the theoretical, methodological, and practical questions brought about by the deep participation of artificial intelligence in cultural and creative industries. It will examine how new cultural content is generated, how new boundaries of creation are drawn, how new forms of interaction emerge, and how new aesthetic standards, copyright rules, trust mechanisms, responsibility structures, and social imaginaries are organized. Through interdisciplinary and cross-sector dialogue, the conference aims to further consider how cultural innovation can maintain openness, creativity, a sense of responsibility, and public value amid the rapid development of intelligent technologies.
The conference welcomes submissions in Chinese or English from universities, research institutions, cultural organizations, creative enterprises, media platforms, design institutions, art organizations, and related industry practitioners in China and abroad. The organizing committee will determine accepted submissions based on quality, relevance to the conference themes, and the overall conference arrangement.
Proposed Parallel Forum Themes
The conference invites paper submissions for the following parallel forum themes. Authors may select one intended forum according to the topic of their paper and submit their materials to the corresponding forum email address. The organizing committee will determine acceptance based on submission quality, thematic relevance, and the overall conference arrangement. When necessary, paper placement may be adjusted by the conference secretariat in consultation with forum convenors.
1. Digital-Intelligent Assets and Human-Machine Collaboration: Scenario-Driven Creativity, Intelligent Production, and Value Reconfiguration
Convenors: Ting Han, Xin Wang, Hongtao Zheng
Submission email: hwawon@sjtu.edu.cn
In an era when hybrid intelligence is deeply penetrating industrial sites, smart mobility and healthcare have become two key scenarios for human-machine collaborative innovation, both highly challenging and socially valuable. Smart mobility is evolving from a single means of transportation into a mobile living space, while healthcare is shifting from standardized diagnosis and treatment toward personalized, full-cycle health management. These two scenarios share several core questions: How can massive behavioral and physiological data be transformed into usable data assets? How can human-computer interaction design and affective computing stimulate safe, trustworthy, and humane creative solutions? How can digital twins, flexible manufacturing, and intelligent scheduling enable the smart manufacturing of cockpit systems, sensors, and personalized medical devices? Ultimately, how can technological advantages be translated into composite industrial value, including safety, efficiency, user experience, and improved quality of life?
This forum focuses on “data–creativity–manufacturing–value” and explores how design can build bridges between technology, experience, and value in smart mobility and healthcare. It invites interdisciplinary dialogue around questions such as how humans and machines can build mutual trust, how experience can generate empathy, how production can become more agile, and how value can be measured. The forum aims to explore viable pathways for China to lead global paradigm innovation in smart mobility and smart healthcare.
2. Hybrid Intelligence and the Reconfiguration of Cultural Heritage Value
Convenors: Ke Xue, Jun Wang, Min Hua
Submission emails: wangjun_rex@sjtu.edu.cn; huamin@sjtu.edu.cn
This forum centers on value innovation and the inheritance and development of cultural heritage in the age of hybrid intelligence. It focuses on the deep integration of hybrid intelligence technologies with the protection, research, communication, and utilization of cultural heritage. It seeks to explore the multiple value dimensions of cultural heritage and to examine how intelligent technologies may support its creative transformation and innovative development.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the mechanisms through which hybrid intelligence empowers cultural heritage; digital twins for cultural industries enabled by hybrid intelligence; human-machine collaborative knowledge production in cultural heritage; AIGC and creative expression of cultural heritage; cultural heritage design in the age of human-machine co-creation; intelligent algorithm-driven cross-cultural communication of cultural heritage; platformization and asset-based operation of cultural heritage data; and hybrid intelligence ethics and the reconfiguration of cultural heritage value.
3. Visual Translation and Communication of Chinese Traditional Art
Convenor: Xiaojun Tao
Submission email: taoxiaojun@sjtu.edu.cn
In the context of globalization and the rapid development of digital technologies, Chinese traditional art is facing a critical opportunity to transform from static display to dynamic communication, and from local viewing to global dialogue. This forum focuses on the decoding and reconstruction of traditional art in contemporary contexts. Taking visual translation as its core perspective, it aims to explore how contemporary design languages, digital media, and cross-cultural narrative strategies can break through the temporal, spatial, and cultural barriers of traditional art forms, enabling their modern transformation and effective international communication.
4. Intelligent Reconstruction and Immersive Audiovisual Transformation of Cultural Elements
Convenors: Liang Yuan, Yucheng Zhu
Submission emails: lyuan@sjtu.edu.cn; zyc420@sjtu.edu.cn
This forum focuses on the integration of culture, creativity, and technology, exploring how cutting-edge technologies can transform cultural elements into interactive digital assets. It will discuss how artificial intelligence can be used for structural analysis and intelligent reconstruction of cultural content; how AIGC, 3D reconstruction, digital humans, and related technologies can shape digital content for cultural creativity; and how spatial narrative and multisensory interaction can create highly immersive audiovisual experiences. The forum aims to build a full-chain digital creativity loop, from the analysis of cultural elements and content generation to scenario-based application.
5. Hybrid Film, Animation, and Digital Media:"Electronic Theater" Art Screening and Hybrid Cinema Innovations in the AI Era
Convenor: Dr. Wen-Shing Ho
Submission method: Please submit through the designated link: https://pan.sjtu.edu.cn/web/collect/b454627bc25b221757057c3cf3b56688
Detailed requirements are provided in Appendix 2.
This forum focuses on the intersection of film art, animation, game cinematics, real-time technologies, scientific visualization, and artificial intelligence. It explores film narrative, creative practice, and technological innovation in the digital age. The forum will include three sections: academic papers, practice-based research, and screenings of works. It aims to promote international academic exchange and interdisciplinary collaboration.
6. Hybrid Intelligence and Paradigm Innovation in Digital Cultural and Creative Industry Research
Convenors: Ruqin Ren, Hanqing Zhao
Submission emails: ruqinren@sjtu.edu.cn; hanqingzhao@sjtu.edu.cn
Hybrid intelligence is not only an object of study and a mode of content production in digital cultural and creative industries, but is also becoming a method and tool for understanding these industries. This forum focuses on how computational research methods, including text mining, computational experiments, agent-based modeling, and large language model-assisted coding, may reconstruct the research process of digital cultural and creative industries after hybrid intelligence enters the research workflow. It examines how these methods can drive innovation in both academic paradigms and industrial practices, enabling researchers to generate new industry insights.
The forum welcomes diverse forms of research from an AI for Social Science perspective, including, but not limited to, theoretical reflection, methodological innovation, case-based practice, and empirical studies on the use of computational methods in digital cultural and creative industry research.
7. The Digital Identity and Multiple Temporalities of Cultural Heritage
Convenor: Yu Yan
Submission email: elenayan@sjtu.edu.cn
Cultural heritage has acquired new modes of existence in the process of digitalization. Technologies such as 3D scanning, blockchain-based rights confirmation, and virtual exhibitions enable cultural heritage to inhabit multiple temporal dimensions at once: the sedimented time of history, the present time of technological capture, the traceable time of rights confirmation and circulation, and the future time of repeated reproduction in digital space.
Is digital technology an extension of cultural relics and heritage, or does it generate an entirely new form of cultural existence? From the intersecting perspectives of heritage preservation, media theory, and technology ethics, this forum explores the ontological dilemmas, temporal politics, and questions of cultural sovereignty involved in the construction of digital identity.
8. Creative Agency and Responsibility Boundaries in Human-Machine Collaboration within Cultural Production
Convenors: Yi Xu, Fanjue Liu
Submission emails: xyphoebe@sjtu.edu.cn; liu.fanjue@sjtu.edu.cn
When generative artificial intelligence participates in the creation, curation, communication, and evaluation of cultural content, who is creating, who holds control, and how should human creative contributions and machine participation be distinguished? When a work involves copyright, ethics, or social consequences, how should responsibility be allocated? How are these boundaries shaped by technological forms, platform mechanisms, organizational relations, and industrial institutions?
This forum focuses on creative agency and responsibility boundaries in human-machine collaboration within cultural production. It examines how people identify the roles, capacities, contributions, and control of humans and machines, and further considers how technological forms, platform rules, and industrial institutions jointly shape creative labor, ownership of works, industrial value, and responsibility allocation.
9. The Global Expansion of Chinese Cultural Enterprises and Outstanding Cultural Products
Convenor: Jun Yao
Submission email: leslie_yao@sjtu.edu.cn
Chinese cultural enterprises and outstanding cultural products currently face a series of deep structural challenges in going global. These include cultural discount caused by insufficiently precise audience targeting, lagging production paradigms and limited communication effects due to insufficient technological empowerment, complex institutional barriers brought by the reconfiguration of globalization, and shortcomings in policy support regarding the coordination between universal provision and precise empowerment.
In response, this forum takes as its point of departure the national strategic call to encourage more cultural enterprises and outstanding cultural products to enter the global market. Against the backdrop of global restructuring and technological iteration, it aims to identify new issues facing the internationalization of Chinese cultural enterprises and cultural products, explore pathways and supporting policy systems for their global expansion, and provide theoretical support and practical guidance for telling China’s stories well and enhancing the communication power and influence of Chinese culture.
10. New Audiovisual Ecosystems in the AI Era: The Revolution of Content Creation from Film and Television to Games
Convenors: Mo Liang, Yefu Qian
Submission emails: ml3702@sjtu.edu.cn; qyfnino@sjtu.edu.cn
With artificial intelligence deeply involved in audiovisual content production, new audiovisual forms such as AI micro-dramas and AI comics-dramas are driving a paradigm shift in cultural communication through new production logics and narrative languages. This forum focuses on the comprehensive reshaping of the audiovisual content industry by artificial intelligence. It covers four frontier areas: AI film and television creation, AIGC short drama production, innovation in interactive film-game narrative, and AI-assisted game development. It explores how generative AI, large language models, and interactive technologies are reconstructing content creation paradigms from film and television to games, and how they are facilitating the emergence of a “next-generation content” ecosystem.
11. Reconstructing Research Methods for Cultural Production Sites: What Counts as Data, and How to Conduct Thick Description?
Convenors: Qian Wu, Lu Xu
Submission emails: wuqiansjtu@sjtu.edu.cn; xl12brielle@sjtu.edu.cn
After generative AI, platform algorithms, virtual humans, and intelligent content systems enter cultural production practices, the “data” encountered by researchers is no longer limited to interviews, observations, texts, or images. It may also include human-machine collaboration processes, prompts, generated outputs, revision trajectories, platform feedback, and organizational judgments. This forum asks what can count as data, how data can be collected, recorded, and verified, and how methodological innovations such as digital ethnography, semantic analysis, and thick description can help researchers understand emerging cultural production sites.
Submission Requirements
1.Submissions may be in Chinese or English.
2.Submissions should be original. Preference will be given to work that has not been previously published.
3.Abstracts should clearly state the research question, research object, theoretical perspective, methodological approach, and main argument.
4.At the submission stage, only an extended abstract is required. Chinese extended abstracts should be 800–1,000 Chinese characters; English extended abstracts should be 600–800 words.
5.Papers are recommended to follow APA style.
6.Authors who wish to be considered for the Best Paper Award must submit a full paper by the specified deadline. Full papers are recommended to be approximately 6,000–12,000 Chinese characters or an equivalent length in English.
7.Each author may submit no more than two papers as first author.
8.Authors are responsible for ensuring that their submissions do not involve confidential information, plagiarism, or other forms of academic misconduct.
9.Abstract submissions should use the template provided in Appendix 1 and be submitted in Word format. The file name should follow the format: “Forum Title + Author Name + Affiliation.”
Important Dates
Deadline for individual paper abstract submission: September 20, 2026
Notification of acceptance: September 30, 2026
Deadline for full-paper submission for Best Paper Award consideration: October 31, 2026
Conference registration deadline: October 31, 2026
Registration procedures, the conference program, and other logistical arrangements will be announced together with the acceptance notification or in subsequent notices.
Submission Method
Authors should send their extended abstracts and relevant information to the submission email address of their intended parallel forum, and copy the conference committee at icci-conf@sjtu.edu.cn. The email subject line should follow the format: “Forum Number and Title + Author Name + Affiliation.” Submission files should use the template provided in Appendix 1 and be submitted in Word format.
Forum 5 includes a screening section. Work submissions for this section should be submitted through the designated link according to the requirements specified in Appendix 2.
Contact Information
Conference secretariat: icci-conf@sjtu.edu.cn
Conference website: https://conference.icci.sjtu.edu.cn
Appendix 1：Information collection form for abstract and artworks
Appendix 2：Submission Requirements for Panel 5