Overview
Natural language processing presents a unique challenge and opportunity in the UAE, where Arabic remains the official language but English, Hindi, Urdu, and Tagalog are widely spoken. The UAE has invested heavily in Arabic-language AI to ensure its diverse population of over 200 nationalities can access digital government services, while simultaneously contributing to the global NLP research community through open-source Arabic foundation models.
UAE Landscape
The Falcon series of large language models, developed by TII in Abu Dhabi, represents the UAE’s most significant NLP contribution. Falcon models support Arabic alongside English and other languages, offering competitive performance against models from major Western labs. Government chatbots powered by NLP now handle millions of enquiries annually across entities like DEWA, RTA, and the Ministry of Interior. Arabic sentiment analysis tools developed by UAE startups serve media monitoring and brand analytics across the Gulf region. MBZUAI’s NLP department focuses on dialectal Arabic understanding, addressing the gap between Modern Standard Arabic and Gulf dialect.
Key Players & Initiatives
| Entity | NLP Focus | Impact |
|---|---|---|
| TII (Falcon LLM) | Multilingual foundation models | Open-source, global adoption |
| MBZUAI NLP Lab | Arabic dialect research | Academic publications |
| Alhosn / UAE Pass | Multilingual identity services | 10M+ users |
| DEWA Rammas | Arabic/English utility chatbot | 6M+ interactions annually |
| Silah Gulf | Arabic call centre AI | Customer service automation |
| Derq | Arabic traffic NLP alerts | Road safety |
| Nafith | Arabic document processing | Logistics & trade |
Policy Framework
The UAE mandates bilingual (Arabic-English) digital government services under the Federal e-Government Strategy. NLP solutions deployed in government must demonstrate proficiency in Gulf Arabic dialect alongside Modern Standard Arabic. Data localisation rules ensure that Arabic language training data collected by government entities remains within UAE data centres. The Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority (TDRA) certifies NLP products for government procurement, with specific benchmarks for Arabic comprehension accuracy.
Vision 2031 Alignment
Multilingual AI is essential to Vision 2031’s inclusive digital society goals. The strategy targets 95 percent of government services to be accessible through conversational AI in at least four languages by 2031. Investment in Arabic NLP positions the UAE as the global hub for Arabic-language AI research. The Dubai Metaverse Strategy further requires NLP capabilities for real-time translation in virtual environments, supporting the Emirate’s ambition to host international virtual events and commerce.