Xiuwen Fu, Meng Qin, Pasquale Pace, Claudio Savaglio, Wenfeng Li, Giancarlo Fortino
Digital Twins (DT) have evolved from static digital mirrors into executable cyber-physical counterparts that predict, optimize, and control complex systems. However, the practical deployment of DT in Internet of Things (IoT) environments suffers from limited data fidelity, model brittleness, and resource constraints across the edge–cloud continuum. Generative DT (GDT) is DT augmented with Generative AI (GenAI). They enable the synthesis of high-fidelity data, bridge model-driven and data-driven paradigms, and provide adaptive decision support under uncertainty. This paper systematically reviews the research progress on GDT in the Manufacturing Internet of Things (MIoT), covering system architectures, key enabling technologies, and representative application scenarios. It also summarizes the main limitations of existing studies and outlines future research directions.