AI Opportunity Initiative for MENA to Make Benefits of AI More Accessible and Inclusive for Everyone

We believe in the importances of making AI accessible to everyone. Doing that means not just developing AI powered products, but also ensuring everyone has the skills needed to thrive in an AI-first world, while supporting the critical work conducted by academics & researchers. This is why we’re excited to announce the launch of the AI Opportunity Initiative for the Middle East & North Africa. This new initiative aims to further empower half a million individuals within two years with critical AI skills. Google’s AI Opportunity Initiative for MENA will include AI skills building, research, products and infrastructure.

Google.org, our philanthropic arm, is planning to contribute US$15 million, between this year and the end of 2027, through funding to organisations across the region to ensure the opportunities created by AI reach everyone.

The announcement comes at a time when recent research indicates a growing need to offer greater digital literacy to help more people become competitive in an AI-first economy and workforce. According to the Economist Impact, the potential economic impact of AI on MENA’s economic growth is an estimated US$320bn by 2030.

Let’s dive into it!

AI Skills Building: We know how important foundational and advanced education is in helping to create the right ecosystem for people to thrive in an AI-first world. This is why we will be launching new educational programs and curriculums covering AI and safety skills, all in Arabic.

• New AI Curriculum in Arabic: A new Arabic language AI-training curriculum under Google's digital skills program in Arabic ‘Maharat min Google’ and Coursera will equip people with AI skills like prompt engineering.
• Supporting underserved communities: Google.org will be offering a grant to Village Capital, to equip Business Support Organizations (BSOs) with AI upskilling opportunities for underserved workers. The program focuses on reaching women, youth, migrants, and those in rural areas across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Palestine, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Lebanon, Bahrain, and Iraq. Village Capital is a nonprofit organisation that unlocks early-stage social and financial capital for entrepreneurs developing solutions to environmental, social, and economic challenges.
• Advancing Responsible AI Education in Arabic: The Experience AI program, created by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a global charity empowering young people through computing, and Google DeepMind, will be offered in Arabic. Raspberry Pi Foundation will use grant funding from Google.org to train teachers on AI Literacy, to equip their students in the region (aged 11-14 yrs) with AI safety skills to better understand and navigate the challenges of AI technologies. In the UAE and Saudi this will be run in partnership with Amideast.

AI Research & Solutions: Since 2005, Google has invested over USD 400 million in academic research globally. In MENA, Google will support the development of helpful AI solutions by local universities and startups.

• AI Research Fund: A new fund by Google.org will support local university researchers in the region focusing on AI solutions for healthcare, climate change, education and beyond.
• AI for Healthcare: Google.org will offer a grant to startAD, the startup accelerator powered by Tamkeen and anchored at New York University Abu Dhabi, to identify and develop AI-powered applications that help provide healthcare access for vulnerable populations in the UAE & the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, including senior citizens, disadvantaged youth, and people from low-income backgrounds.

AI-powered features in Arabic: Gemini, Google’s AI-powered personal assistant, launched in Arabic in July 2023 and understands over 16 Arabic dialects. To continue supporting helpful products in Arabic, Google is releasing new features for Gemini in Arabic, including:

• Gems on Gemini in Arabic allows users to create personalised AI experts for various tasks, including career and learning guidance, brainstorming, editing and coding support. The feature is available for Gemini Advanced users.
• Gemini for Teens is a dedicated and age-appropriate experience for users under the age of 18, with features like double-check response, which helps evaluate whether there’s content across the web to substantiate Gemini’s responses.
• Imagen3 in Arabic enables Image generation using Arabic language prompts.
• Gemini Live in Arabic is a free-flowing conversational experience that allows users to chat with Gemini on mobile. The feature is available on Android devices.

Investments in Infrastructure: We also announced a partnership with Public Investment Fund (PIF) of Saudi Arabia to expand the existing Dammam Google Cloud region with an AI hub to support global customers. Additionally, the partnership will advance AI research in Arabic-language models and will provide AI and digital upskilling programs to help create highly-skilled jobs and opportunities for global businesses to fuel growth through cloud adoption.

We hope that these initiatives will help support more people across MENA and Arabic speakers to hone their AI skills and thrive in an AI-first world.