The UAE has emerged as a model in leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to integrate the Arabic language and its cultural heritage into the digital sphere, boosting its regional and global presence as a language capable of meeting future demands.
State institutions are implementing AI-driven initiatives across publishing, education, lexicography, and creative content. Among the leading projects is the Historical Dictionary of Arabic Language, a monumental scientific achievement completed last year by Sharjah, documenting the evolution of Arabic throughout history.
This was followed by the launch of the GPT Historical Dictionary of the Arabic Language project, which uses AI to provide researchers and enthusiasts with over 20 million Arabic words. The platform enables users to write and read texts, convert them into videos, and continuously update the dictionary through a collaboration between the Arabic Language Academy in Sharjah and the Emirates Scholar Research Centre.
The Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation is advancing Arabic digital culture and knowledge through the Digital Knowledge Hub, an Arabic platform for producing, collecting, and organising digital content. It now hosts over 800,000 titles and 8.5 million digital items across more than 18 specialised libraries.
The Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre has also launched several AI-based publishing projects, including the first comprehensive Arabic-English dictionary employing AI and computational linguistics. Covering over 7,000 core modern terms, it offers automated pronunciation, simplified definitions, examples, images, and precise grammatical and semantic classifications.
In partnership with New York University Abu Dhabi and Zayed University, the centre developed the Balanced Arabic Readability Corpus (BAREC) project, collecting a 10-million-word linguistic corpus across diverse literary genres and topics.
At the latest Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, the centre unveiled the Digital Square initiative, a technical platform to promote AI use in publishing and books.
Several educational institutions are also launching initiatives to incorporate AI and modern technologies into teaching the Arabic language.
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