On 12 September 2025, the Department of Digital Arts and Creative Industries (DACI) at Lingnan University hosted the symposium “Art and Creativity in the Age of AI”, exploring the transformative impact of artificial intelligence on art and the creative industries.

DACI is an interdisciplinary and innovative hub covering film and television, animation, museum and curatorial studies, art history, digital arts, and immersive media, aiming to nurture creative talents for Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area.

Professor Eugene Ch’ng, Dean of the School of Culture and Creativity (SCC) at Beijing Normal University–Hong Kong Baptist University (BNBU), was invited as the keynote speaker.

In his presentation entitled “From Thought to Immersive Spaces: Nurturing Creativity in the Age of AI and the Metaverse”, Professor Ch’ng highlighted that generative AI and metaverse technologies offer unprecedented opportunities while posing significant challenges to creative education. He cautioned that overreliance on AI tools, without a solid foundation, could impede students’ creative development. He advocated for a balanced approach, urging educators to embrace AI and immersive technologies as supportive tools rather than substitutes for human creativity. He emphasised the importance of developing students’ technical skills, domain knowledge, imagination, and critical thinking to ensure technology serves as a catalyst, not a crutch.

Professor Ch’ng also shared case studies from his digital heritage projects and teaching experiences from two newly offered courses — “Virtual Reality Art” and “Digitising Heritage” — illustrating how structured foundational training can lay the groundwork for creative expression in immersive media. He has also been actively promoting the development of the BNBU Centre for Computational Culture and Heritage, which aims to provide technological support and practical platforms for digital culture and creative education. The symposium also featured the participation of Mr. Cliff Ho, Senior Solution Architect at the NVIDIA AI Technology Center and a member of the Centre, who introduced the integration of generative AI and NVIDIA Omniverse in visual media production and shared use cases in advertising, entertainment, and industrial design, which are expected to offer valuable insights for the Centre’s future explorations in immersive media and AI-driven creative production.