Dubai’s AI agent hub, Adnoc’s data push and YouTube Shopping

Want an AI agent without having to build one? Dubai Chambers has opened a shop. Its recently launched Chamber AI Hub lets member companies pick from 22 ready-made agents designed to handle jobs including contract review, matching invoices to purchase orders, screening CVs, and drafting business proposals. The chamber says the bots are fluent in English and Arabic and that company data is hosted in the UAE.

Adnoc is doubling down on its bid to make better use of its data using AI: Adnoc Gas is scaling its industrial data platform, while Adnoc Upstream is pooling operating data to improve production, AI vendor Cognite said this week.

BACKGROUND: As we reported earlier this month, oil and gas players are infamous for what one might call a “sub-par approach to data management,” with field and operational data strewn in a variety of formats across devices and systems that don’t talk to each other. AIQ, ADNOC’s joint venture with Presight, told us its engineers spend an average of 100 days on-site consolidating customers’ data and training AI systems — groundwork needed before the technology can deliver on its promise.

What to watch for next: AIQ’s planned unveiling of its Genesis platform at next month’s Adipec conference. The company told us it was testing the product on Adnoc systems, with the aim of automating data extraction, analysis, and visualization across an entire company.

YouTube creators across MENA might be able to get their hands on some affiliate revenue a bit faster after the Google unit launched its Shopping affiliate programme in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt. Amazon is on board as its first partner. The program allows creators with at least 500 subscribers to earn commissions on products tagged in videos, Shorts and livestreams. Google uses AI to figure out what’s on screen and suggest affiliate links.