Industrial Research Unit · Straits Institute for Applied AI
Applied AI in the United Arab Emirates
The Emirates have put AI into hospitals and the machinery of government first — Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi across its imaging, a federal project to run services on AI agents — under a national strategy running to 2031.
AI readiness
0.63
Rank 38 of 171 — IMF AI Preparedness Index
Ecosystem
5
of 36 — Stanford AI Index vibrancy ranking
On the record
22
entries across 8 industries
National programme
2017
National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence 2031
National programme
National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence 2031
Announced 2017. Its pillars are AI destination, priority sectors, ecosystem, government services.
Services 54.9% · Industry 44.3% · Agriculture 0.8% of gross value added — World Bank, 2024
Kind
Role
22 entries
Government & Public Sector
10
The federal government has launched a national project to run services on AI agents, and the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department analyses case files with it.
DeploymentGovernment & Public SectorUnited Arab Emirates7 Sep 2026
Dubai clears airport passengers in 12 seconds with a mobile biometric service
General Directorate of Identity and Foreigners Affairs, Dubai — Dubai's General Directorate of Identity and Foreigners Affairs launched 'Click and Travel', which lets officers clear a passenger's immigration transaction in roughly 12 to 15 seconds through biometric immigration clearance. The mobile immigration service combines live passenger records, automated pre-screening and electronic passport reading with facial recognition, and handled 31,373 passengers in a May-to-end-August pilot.
DeploymentGovernment & Public SectorUnited Arab Emirates6 Sep 2026
Dubai Police put 36 automation robots into policing and admin work
Dubai Police — Dubai Police has deployed 36 robots for robotic process automation in policing and administration, automation robots that take routine admin work off staff. The force also finished 104 strategic and operational technology projects last year, disclosed at Commander-in-Chief Lieutenant General Abdulla Khalifa Al Marri's annual inspection of the General Department of Artificial Intelligence.
DeploymentGovernment & Public SectorUnited Arab Emirates3 Sep 2026
UAE Cabinet puts 32 AI advisers to work alongside its ministers
UAE Cabinet — UAE Cabinet has approved a Cabinet AI Advisor system of 32 specialised AI policy advisers working with ministers around the clock. These digital advisers review policy and legislation, gauge impact, benchmark global best practice and recommend; Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum approved it at the season's first Cabinet meeting, at Qasr Al Watan in Abu Dhabi.
DeploymentGovernment & Public SectorUnited Arab Emirates3 Sep 2026
Dubai's land registry cuts property registration from 30 minutes to five
Dubai Land Department — Dubai Land Department's Initial Registration platform brings AI property registration to developers, reading Emirates IDs, passports and sales contracts, extracting the relevant data and auto-filling fields. Project and transaction registration and escrow account management now share one system; senior manager Mustafa Al Rifai says data entry drops up to 80 per cent and 30-minute registrations take under five.
DeploymentGovernment & Public SectorUnited Arab Emirates18 Aug 2026
UAE launches a national project to run services on AI agents
UAE Federal Government — The UAE federal government's new National Agentic AI Project moves services onto agentic AI in government, keeping human oversight, with early workflows in technical support, customer service, tax auditing and procurement. Over 50 federal entities have joined, aiming to run half of federal services on autonomous AI agents within two years.
DeploymentGovernment & Public SectorUnited Arab Emirates28 Jul 2026
Abu Dhabi launches an AI platform to analyse case files
Abu Dhabi Judicial Department — The Abu Dhabi Judicial Department launched an AI judicial platform that automates case-file analysis, quickly finds and compares legal precedents and helps draft legal memoranda and judicial documents. Judges retain full authority with the AI as legal assistant, in what officials call the world's first fully integrated AI-powered judicial platform.
DeploymentGovernment & Public SectorUnited Arab Emirates29 Jun 2026
UAE weather centre puts two agentic AI assistants beside its forecasters
National Centre of Meteorology (UAE) — The UAE's National Centre of Meteorology introduced agentic AI in weather forecasting, with two AI assistants in its operations rooms as a roadmap's first step. 'Al Rased' raises alerts from continuous monitoring of weather stations, radars, satellites and seismic and air-quality networks; 'Forecaster's Assistant' weighs global model outputs against numerical-model data and writes draft bulletins. Humans keep the final say, per the director general.
DeploymentGovernment & Public SectorUnited Arab Emirates25 May 2026
UAE finance ministry's call centre AI scores caller sentiment and coaches agents
Ministry of Finance (UAE) — The UAE Ministry of Finance has introduced AI call centre analytics that record and assess calls, reading caller sentiment and showing unhappy calls red and resolved ones green on a managers' dashboard. It also logs call length, resolution time and each handler's performance score, and nudges agents mid-call to swap casual phrases for formal, service-minded language.
DeploymentGovernment & Public SectorUnited Arab Emirates29 Mar 2026
Abu Dhabi grows its AI inspection vehicle fleet to 27
Abu Dhabi City Municipality — Abu Dhabi City Municipality now has 27 AI inspection vehicles under its Unified Inspection System. Using cameras, detection systems and automated analysis, they spot visual problems in public spaces unaided and send locations and data to inspection teams, reducing manual inspections. Recorded visual-distortion cases climbed from 3,632 in 2024 to 18,851 by end-2025, which the municipality puts down to wider coverage rather than more problems.
DeploymentGovernment & Public SectorUnited Arab Emirates8 Jan 2026
Dubai Municipality pilots AI cameras on waste trucks to catch litterers
Dubai Municipality — Dubai Municipality is piloting AI litter detection with cameras on waste trucks watching roads, neighbourhoods and public spaces for littering and illegal dumping. Instant image analysis puts violations on digital dashboards for quick field action; littering costs up to Dh500, under the emirate's Smart Waste Management framework.
Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi has taken AI across its imaging, and two Abu Dhabi hospitals now flag patients at risk of sepsis with it.
DeploymentHealthcare & Life SciencesUnited Arab Emirates26 Aug 2026
Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi deploys AI tools across its imaging
Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi — Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi has deployed several AI medical imaging tools. Transpara highlights suspicious mammogram areas ahead of clinician review, intelligent radiotherapy software adapts cancer treatment doses mid-care, and ARTIS Icono 3D imaging aids urgent stroke intervention.
DeploymentHealthcare & Life SciencesUnited Arab Emirates26 Aug 2026
Two UAE hospitals deploy AI to flag patients at risk of sepsis
Sheikh Khalifa Medical City & Al Ain Hospital — Sheikh Khalifa Medical City and Al Ain Hospital have brought in AI sepsis detection, with algorithms and alerts flagging patients' risk of sepsis and septic shock. Catching early warning signs buys clinical teams extra time to start treatment, the hospitals say.
DeploymentHealthcare & Life SciencesUnited Arab Emirates26 Aug 2026
Al Jalila Children's uses AI-assisted EEG to flag epileptic seizures
Al Jalila Children's — Al Jalila Children's Speciality Hospital has introduced AI seizure detection using algorithm-assisted digital EEG equipment. The system recognises patterns linked to epileptic seizures, aiming to warn early.
DeploymentHealthcare & Life SciencesUnited Arab Emirates25 May 2026
SEHA fertility centre uses AI to rank embryos for IVF transfer
SEHA Corniche Fertility Centre (PureHealth) — SEHA's Corniche Fertility Centre in Abu Dhabi, part of PureHealth, is using Vitrolife's iDAScore for AI embryo selection through the EmbryoScope time-lapse system, a first in the PureHealth network. Learning from embryos with known outcomes, it ranks implantation potential across full time-lapse development, replacing embryologists' manual morphokinetic analysis and putting the most viable first in line, SEHA says.
ADNOC runs SLB's drilling analytics across 120 rigs.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesUnited Arab Emirates4 Aug 2026
ADNOC deploys SLB's AI drilling analytics across 120 rigs
ADNOC — ADNOC and SLB run a DrillOps-powered Real-Time Operations Centre across 120-plus onshore and offshore rigs, feeding live data to AI drilling analytics that flag problems early. ADNOC credits the AI-led monitoring with 30 to 40 per cent less engineering effort, two to three times more rigs per engineer and up to two days' downtime avoided; no independent evaluation is published.
Evidence of adoptionManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesUnited Arab Emirates20 May 2026
ADNOC says it runs 115 AI agents and 3,000 staff-built models
ADNOC — ADNOC runs over 115 enterprise AI agents across auditing, procurement, finance and HR, chief executive Sultan Al Jaber told the UAE government's Agentic AI retreat. Some 20,000 staff trained to build job-specific AI models now use 3,000 daily, and company-wide AI utilisation reached 80% in the prior 90 days.
Sharjah's transport authority has fitted AI cameras to its intercity buses, watching both the road and the driver.
DeploymentTransport & LogisticsUnited Arab Emirates20 Aug 2026
Sharjah fits AI cameras to its intercity buses to watch the road and the driver
Sharjah Roads and Transport Authority — The Sharjah Roads and Transport Authority is fitting AI bus cameras to 131 intercity buses, ten each with six inside and four outside, to catch driver fatigue or inattention, count boarding and alighting passengers and log accidents and unusual incidents. Taxis already carry five AI-supported smart cameras watching the road and the cabin. Chairman Yousef Khamis Al Othmani says the rollout continues for safety, efficiency and customer experience.
DeploymentTransport & LogisticsUnited Arab Emirates6 Jul 2026
Dubai's RTA launches AI decision support to dispatch buses in under a minute
Roads and Transport Authority (Dubai) — Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) says its new AI bus dispatch Decision Support System will cut bus deployment to under a minute from 30 to 60 minutes. Machine learning and optimisation algorithms choose and dispatch the best-suited buses live, watching over 1,100 buses across 26 operational scenarios to match Metro and Tram disruptions.
Abu Dhabi has put Microsoft Copilot in front of 35,000 civil servants across 27 government entities.
DeploymentBusiness OperationsUnited Arab Emirates6 Jul 2026
Abu Dhabi rolls out Microsoft Copilot to 35,000 civil servants
Abu Dhabi Government, Department of Government Enablement — Abu Dhabi Government is rolling out Microsoft 365 Copilot for civil servants: its Frontier Employee Programme added 26,000 users across 27 government entities to 9,000 existing licences, making 35,000. Wesam Lootah, Director General of GovDigital at the Department of Government Enablement, says the public-sector AI rollout stays governed and secure, with Advanced Data Residency on every licence keeping processing inside the UAE. AI training and certification come with it.
The education ministry has named four generative AI platforms approved for schools.
RegulationEducation & TrainingUnited Arab Emirates21 Feb 2026
UAE education ministry names four AI platforms approved for schools
Ministry of Education (UAE) — The UAE Ministry of Education's guide on safe, responsible classroom use of generative AI in schools now has a first annex approving four platforms under set controls: ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini and Anthropic's Claude. Use of the approved platforms requires human review of outputs, fact-checking and academic integrity, the ministry says.
Rotana checks guests in by face across 15 Abu Dhabi hotels.
DeploymentRetail & ConsumerUnited Arab Emirates20 Aug 2026
Rotana checks guests in by face across 15 Abu Dhabi hotels
Rotana — Rotana has introduced H2O Hospitality's AI hotel check-in at 15 Rotana-branded Abu Dhabi properties, 4,240 rooms across Rotana Hotels & Resorts, Arjaan and Centro. Guests send passport details and a face photo over WhatsApp a day or two ahead, and facial recognition confirms them at the front desk. Both firms are discussing expansion outside Abu Dhabi.
Every entry on this page is a named organisation putting AI to work in a real job, taken from the State of Applied AI record. Each one is traced to the report it came from and dated, and where a figure is the organisation’s own the entry says so rather than presenting it as an independent result. Readiness, ecosystem and policy figures, where shown, are attributed on the card to the body that published them.
The record is maintained continuously by the Industrial Research Unit of the Straits Institute for Applied AI: entries are added as they are found and verified, not on a schedule, and nothing is published without an open source behind it. It currently holds 1114 entries across 249 countries.
United Arab Emirates7 Sep 2026
Turkey
Israel
Lebanon
Qatar
Syria
Egypt
Morocco
Jordan
Saudi Arabia
Yemen
Algeria
Iraq
Kuwait
Oman