Emirates NBD wants to be the first MENA bank to use ChatGPT on in-country infra + AI-for-movies company lands USD 1 mn

UAE lender Emirates NBD says it’s on track to become the first bank in MENA to deploy OpenAI’s ChatGPT using in-country infrastructure housed entirely in the Emirates, the two said in a statement out late yesterday. The planned rollout could give other banks in our corner of the world a blueprint for using global AI models on sensitive banking data while keeping processing at home as governments across the region tighten data residency and sovereignty requirements.

Lights, camera, algorithm: Dubai-based Popcorn AI Studio, which makes AI tools for producing films and videos in Arabic, has raised USD 1 mn in pre-seed funding, the company said in a press release.

Speaking of popcorn: You should also check out Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (probably the creepiest film Donald Sutherland ever did and that’s saying a lot) and Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (better than Midsommar, which is pretty much the same film, just 46 years later).

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