Lucid opens plant at KAEC; King Long wins Dubai AV challenge

Middle East AI News weekly digest...

Good morning!

Welcome to this week’s Middle East AI News!

The big news this week is that Lucid Motors has begun production at its new AMP-2 plant in King Abdullah Economic City, albeit semi knocked-down assembly to begin with. The news was announced yesterday, as the California based electric vehicle company inaugurated its first manufacturing plant outside the US and the first under Saudi Arabia’s strategy to create a new EV export manufacturing sector.

Lots of other news, including the opening of BCG’s new Global Centre for the Future of Cities in Riyadh and the opening of Nokia’s Open Innovation Lab in Dubai. And, in case you missed, last week’s ATRC announcement about creating a new global AI platform company in Abu Dhabi.

Meanwhile, I’ll be hosting Middle East AI News LIVE on LinkedIn at 12 noon KSA / 1pm UAE time / 9am GMT today!

The main topic of today’s Middle East AI News LIVE is Saudi Arabia’s new Personal Data Protection Law, which came into force this month. I’ll be talking to Nick O’Connell, Partner, Head of Digital & Data - Saudi Arabia at law firm Al Tamimi & Company and Ahmed Shokr, Data Protection & Privacy Lead at KPMG Saudi Arabia.

And, click here to attend Middle East AI News LIVE.

Thanks for reading!

/Carrington

Electric Vehicles

Lucid Motors opens Saudi plant

#Saudi #EVs - US electric-vehicle maker Lucid Group, has opened its first international manufacturing plant in Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah Economic City, heralding a new era of Industry 4.0 manufacturing in the Kingdom. Lucid's AMP 2 facility has already begun semi knocked-down assembly, and Lucid aims to transition to complete build production after 2025. (Arab News)

Autonomous Vehicles

Chinese, Egyptian firms win Dubai World Challenge

#UAE #AVs - The Dubai World Challenge for Self-Driving Transport has awarded top prizes in the industry category of this year's self-driving bus competition to Chinese bus manufacturer King Long and Egyptian startup Bright Drive. (Middle East AI News)

Generative AI

Abu Dhabi to create OpenAI rival

#UAE #LLMs - Abu Dhabi's Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC) plans to announce the launch of a new AI company by the end of this year, to challenge ChatGPT creator OpenAI, and others. The news that Abu Dhabi is about to disrupt the global AI business was revealed in The Economist. (Middle East AI News)

AI Policy

UAE creates ‘Rules as Code’ platform

#UAE #policymaking - The UAE is creating a "Rules as Code" platform, for developing AI-based financial laws, legislation and policies, providing policymakers, and financial and legal professionals with a better understanding of the policy environment. The platform is a joint initiative of the Ministry of Finance, the UAE AI, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications Office and the Mohammed Bin Rashid Centre for Government Innovation. (Emirates News Agency)

Internet of Things

Nokia to open MEA Open Innovation lab

#UAE #5G - Nokia is to launch an Open Innovation lab for the Middle East and Africa in Dubai to help drive regional innovation for Cloud RAN (or C-RAN, a new type of Radio Access Network), and accelerate the adoption of AI for network automation and optimisation. (Middle East AI News)

Smart Cities

BCG opens global future cities centre

#Saudi #smartcities - Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has opened a Global Centre for the Future of Cities in Riyadh, holding an official inauguration this week. The global consulting group promotes an innovative, resident-centric approach to developing smart cities. (BCG)

Education

SDAIA launches LLM training initiative

#Saudi #training - Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) will run 32 training camps, focused on large language models, in an effort to nurture a new generation of LLM experts. The first camp will begin on October 8th, and will be held virtually over four weeks. (Arab News)

NU-Q student creates AI based job aggregator

#Qatar #AI - Northwestern University in Qatar's (NU-Q) communication senior, Abenezer Bekele has developed an AI based job aggregator for loan relief application to help students at Qatar Foundation (QF) with loan repayment options. (Gulf Times)

Robotics

Khalifa University inaugurates marine research lab

#UAE #marinestudies - Khalifa University in the UAE and America's Stanford University, are developing underwater robots to perform a variety of tasks, from monitoring the health of coral reefs, to underwater inspections of offshore oil rigs. The robots are being tested in a wave pool at Khalifa University, which is part of the new marine research lab. (Khalifa University)

Aviation

Riyadh Air to use AI to choose green flight routes

#Saudi #aviation - Saudi Arabia’s newest airline Riyadh Air will use artificial intelligence to track the least carbon-emitting flight routes, according to its chief operating officer. The COO made the comments at the UN World Tourism Day 2023, held in Riyadh this week. (Arab News)

Security

Communities could be patrolled by drones next year

#UAE #drones - More residential and commercial communities in the UAE, could be patrolled by drones, as the country's climate heats up, according to private security company G4S. The company's World Security Report, says that 46% of chief security officers believe climate change will become a ‘security impacting hazard’. (Zawya)

Digital Transformation

Government identifies 2024 AI projects

#Oman #AI - Oman's Ministry of Economy has confirmed that it now has 18 AI-related projects, submitted by 11 government departments, under its central 10 million rial national initiative. The Ministry launched the “Initiative to Empower the National Economy Enhanced by AI for the year 2024”, in June, with the aim of integrating AI into government development projects and programs. (Muscat Daily)

Media

UAE publishes guide to 100 AI apps for media

#UAE #media - The UAE government has created a guide that provides 100 practical applications, and use cases of generative AI, for UAE-based media and content creators. The guide was launched this week, at the 21st edition of the Arab Media Forum in Dubai. (Gulf News)

AI Diplomacy

UAE, Netherlands to collaborate on renewables, space, AI

#UAE #Netherlands #AIdiplomacy - At a bilateral meeting this week, The Netherlands and UAE governments discussed plans to catalyse investment flows and joint ventures in priority sectors such as renewable energy, space industry, AI, agri-tech and smart mobility solutions. (Gulf News)

Defence

US imposes sanctions on Iranian drone procurement network

#US #Iran #UAE - The United States yesterday placed sanctions on entities and people based in China, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Iran for aiding the Iranian attack drone program, which Washington accuses of supplying such weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine. (Reuters)